First Shots With Portra 400 – Amazing Warmth!

4 min read

Getting into film photography, I had read a lot about the famous Kodak Portra series. As the name suggests, it was designed for portraits, but obviously it can be applied to different types of photography. I mostly shoot street and landscape so I was interested to see how it would do with different colors.

Walking around the neighbourhood

I knew Portra 400 would be good, given its “World’s finest grain at 400 ISO” tagline, but I was still blown away. I do like the warmth and how the blues and greens “pop”.

These shots are from a couple of rolls from the end of 2021 – beginning of 2022. The forest and park areas pictured above are from the Geldrop and Heeze areas in the Netherlands.

Portraits on Portra are, obviously, great! Looking back at some of these shots, I’m reminded that I should try to shoot more portraits. My difficulty is always finding subjects, but I guess I should start with my family ☺️.

The red bricks and red leaves also look very peculiar with Portra 400. There’s something warm and inviting in the red tones. The bright red tree below does not look like that in real life, the film gives it a very extreme red because of the sunlight and the natural redness in the autumn leaves.

Heading off to Luxembourg

In December 2021 our home was at the height (or bottom) of renovation activities – everything was torn down and we were living in our attic. We deservedly needed a break from the chaos, so we decided to drive down to Luxembourg! It was a bit of a spontaneous decision, but it definitely paid off.

I had finished the previous roll, so when we arrived in LUX I put the next roll of Portra 400 in my Nikon F3. Most of the shots were done with the 50mm f/1.4 or with the 35-105 zoom.

Spending the new year eve in Luxembourg was great – the markets were nice, and there was a lot to explore, even though it was still in the midst of the COVID situation. It was quite foggy on our first day of exploration, but the warm colors of most buildings were amazingly complemented by the tones of Portra 400! I absolutely love how all of the foggy shots turned out, but at the time of shooting I wasn’t that sure. I would mostly shoot on sunny days or during golden hour. I learned not to underestimate the potential for good photography in different weather conditions.

If you’ve never been to Luxembourg, I highly recommend it! It is an amazing city with so many layers of buildings. It always makes me feel like I’m in a fairy tale or in a Studio Ghibli movie 😅. Looking back at these shots, two things are certain – I need to shoot more Portra, and I need to visit Luxembourg again! I have some portra 6×6 shots from my recent trip to Taiwan, which I will be posting soon!

Back to Taiwan!

Well… I didn’t finish the roll in Luxembourg, so it was still in my camera when I went on my next business trip to Taiwan. I had to do 14 days of quarantine again, stuck in a hotel room in Taipei. Luckily this time I had large windows and I could take some shots while in quarantine.

I decided to play around with long exposures and see if I understood how to use reciprocity calculations. I like how the below shots turned out – exposure wise they are great! I’m sure better compositions could be had, but overall the shots worked well.

All in all, Portra 400 really shines (pun intended) in daylight. The warmth and the tones just make a great overall package. I will definitely experiment more with Portra in different conditions. I’d like to do more foggy or rainy shots with it, and definitely more portraits!