If there’s two words ubiquitous with film photography, it’s Kodak Portra. The former is almost a modern fable for what happens when you don’t keep up with modern technology. The latter, perhaps the most popular set of film stocks still on the market today. There are three different versions you can buy: Portra 160, Portra 400 and Portra 800, the most obvious difference being their ISO values. Portra 400 has long been the most popular, with 400 ISO giving the best balance between grain and speed for everyday use. However, this blog will cover the bookends of the range and what better way to test the two with trips to the zoo!

First up we have Portra 160 which sits in a bit of an odd place in Kodak’s range. Kodak Ektar is currently the more highly favoured low ISO (colour negative) film which has slightly less grain and a lot more saturation compared to the Portra’s more muted tones. It is in fact the least saturated film stock of the Portra range, but still retains the characteristically warm colour palette that it is known for.

Despite the slow speed of the film, I didn’t have any issues with shooting it outdoors with shutter speeds of around 1/500s. It was certainly helped by the fact that I was using and F2.8 lens but even with cheaper gear, as zoo animals do a lot of sitting around, I think I would have been fine with shooting at F4 or even F5.6 in certain situations (handheld). Though if you go shooting on an especially grim day then perhaps you may start to struggle with slower glass. This is where having a form of VR or IS on your lens (and a compatible camera) really gives you an extra helping hand.

From my experience Portra 800 performs much more like Portra 400 with its similar saturation levels, but by far the most liberating difference is the film speed. Shooting at 800 ISO does make things a whole lot easier even during daytime. You can quite happily stop down your aperture if you want that extra depth of field, and even if you are using slower glass or shooting on a dull day you won’t have any issues with slow shutter speeds. It is much more versatile, and I do find that versatility matters a whole lot more with film photography, as the ISO is locked in unlike with digital photography. Upping the ISO on digital may introduce more noise, but a noisy shot in focus will always be better than a clean shot that is blurry.

But how much detail are you sacrificing for this extra speed? The two shots below are a comparison with 100% crops to show the difference. You can see that the grain is significantly more present on the Portra 800, and the Portra 160 is resolving more detail. However, when you zoom out and look at the pictures as a whole, I don’t find the grain of the Portra 800 to be that intrusive. I certainly wouldn’t use it for landscape work but for moving subjects it makes an ideal choice. Of course, there is the happy medium of Portra 400 and it is no surprises why it is the favourite of the range.

So to conclude, what would I recommend you use each one for? Well, Portra 160 is certainly best suited to landscape and still life work. It is significantly slower than the others, but its softer less saturated tones give it a vastly different look to Kodak’s more vibrant Ektar and sometimes that will just fit the mood of your photography better. Portra 800 is going to be most useful in low light situations or where you have fast action, and it might be just the thing I need to try for bird photography that requires shutter speeds in excess of 1/1000s. For general use, handheld portraits, and everything else, Portra 400 will most likely remain the better option and I am sure I will write a blog about it at some point.

But what do you think? Based on the pictures here did you prefer one or the other? Which version of Portra is your favourite? Let me know in the comments down below.

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