Portra 400 Capture One

Portra 400: I Was Doing It Wrong

Portra 400 120
Portra 400 Preset Capture One
Portra 400 Capture One Download
Portra 400 Capture One Manual

Feb 9, 2018

For this new episode, I went for a hike and explored the Cinque Terre with a Rolleiflex and two rolls of Kodak Portra: 160 and 400. The idea was to do to some sort of comparison between those two with the secret hope of finally having good results with the 400…and the magic finally happened!

Film Emulation Presets for Capture One – Discover 300 Film Emulation Presets that will spark your creativity and take your images to the next level! This collection digitally emulates popular film looks such as Kodak, Fuji, Agfa & Polaroid. Create a variety of unique film looks for the latest version of Capture One. Perfect for weddings. The Capture One Film Emulation Collection is for the photographer who wants professional film emulation presets. Each preset has been crafted to produce stunning film looks for the modern photographer. Compatible with Capture One 12 and Capture One 20 photo editing software.

Since I’ve started film photography, we kind of had a love/hate relationship together. When you get into film, you quickly realize that Portra 400 is at the summit of film chain for a majority of photographers. So like most people do when they start, I got myself a few rolls and started to snap around thinking about the beautiful images Portra would give me…Even if I was somehow happy with the results, they had nothing to do compared to what I got one year later.

The 2 reasons why I wasn’t 100% satisfied with Portra

Not exposing properly

Coming from digital, I was still discovering the basic principles of how to expose colour film. I didn’t know for example that C41 colour films prefer bright environments and could handle one or two extra stops of light without batting an eye.

When you shoot digital you have to expose for the highlights and know that shadows can always be recovered if you shoot in RAW. With film that’s the exact opposite, the general rule is that you should expose for the shadows and feed the film with enough light to record information on the negative.

At the time, my inexperience let me rely on the camera meter without ever questioning its decisions, but that was before…

How I meter the light today

The Rolleiflex I have doesn’t have a build in meter so I used an app called Light Meter on my iPhone for the entire day. Both rolls were shot at box speed and exposed for the shadows.

You can see that most shots were shot against the sun. This is a technique often used to give more depth to an image, by defining the contours around the subject but it can be challenging to meter.

A simple tip I useis to put my hand facing the light source and point the light meter toward the palm of my hand. By doing this, you ensure that the skin tones receive enough light to be well exposed.

This is also a way to increase the saturation. C41 colour film needs a lof light and has a wide exposure latitude so don’t be afraid to feed it with light 😉

On the other hand (pun not intended), you want to be careful if you are shooting with E6 slide film. This one is a bit of a princess when it comes to exposure and doesn’t handle over-exposition as good as C41. If you apply this technique with slide, the sky on the background of your hand will be also white and completely burned out. When shooting contrasty scenes with slide film, you have to decide if want to expose for the shadows or the highlights so bear that in mind.

Scanning a pro film on an mid-range scanner

Until recently, I was still scanning my negatives at home with an Epson V550 but there’s a sad reality when it comes to scan colour film: some aren’t going to like it and Portra 400 is one of them. Sure there are techniques to edit colour film but it’s time consuming and the results aren’t always as good as they could be.

This time, I knew that it would be different as both rolls would be processed by the great guys from nationphoto.com.

I was sure that with having a proper development and scanning, and a better understanding of how you should expose film, all odds were in my favour to have decent images to look at!

Portra 400 120

From here you can have watch the video where you can see me shooting both films, followed by a selection of samples of Kodak Portra 160 and 400.

I’m sorry if this is not a proper and fair comparison as I should have done a proper side by side of the two films shot on the same camera, but life decided otherwise. Also, when I shot the Portra 160, the light conditions where far from ideal and the results aren’t that good as with the 400. But there’s nothing to blame on the film here!

Anyway, let’s look at some samples of the Portra 160 so you can get an idea of its look.

Samples of Kodak Portra 160

For me, the most interesting shots came from the Portra 400. What changed between the two rolls is the light condition. The 160 was shot from 11am until 2pm, whereas the 400 from 2 to 4pm during winter time.

Portra 400 Preset Capture One

The only difference was the sun starting to set which resulted in a light more flattering especially at the end of the roll but I’ll let you judge by yourself.