I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. Still, it’s a great thrill to hear that Kodak has followed their New Portra 400 formulation with a New Portra 160. Gone are the VC/NC designations. And gone also is much of the grain! According to Kodak’s “idiot-grams” (simplistic charts), New Portra 160 will have the saturation of the old Portra 160NC, but with a significant grain improvement. Portra 160 is the least saturated, Portra 400 in the middle, and Ektar is practically glow-in-the-dark. I like Ektar during daylight conditions, but it sucks for skintones during the ‘golden hour’. So having a New 160 will help fill that void.
What I really want to see is the the latitude. Will it be similar to Portra 400, or will it be less flexible, like Ektar?
I first heard about this on Leo Patrone’s blog. You can read the official Kodak stuff here. Oh and it should be available in about a month!
There are two things that one can assume from recent events from Kodak
1. They’re cutting down costs so instead of making two films they make only one though it’s good that they simply didn’t go the path of killing just one of the two and instead went with using a new formula which, IMO, is really great
2. They might be replacing the Portra 800 film in the near future…the Portra 400 can be easily and with great results be pushed to ISO 800 or 1600 or even 3200 and still develop it at ISO 400. I’ve taking photos metered at 1600 and done normal developing and have obtained a great looking image.
Thanks for your comment, Luis!
I think yes, there is a certain amount of cost-savings involved in reducing the types of film stock they offer. But it’s not simply that. The technology has progressed to the point where fewer film stocks are needed. I would bet they might even dump Portra 800 altogether. Like you said, shooting New Portra 400 at 1600 and beyond is very doable. Looks better than 800 shot at box speed in my opinion. The only problem I suppose is getting a lab to push C41. My local pro lab won’t do it, but the lab I use the most (Richard Photo Lab in LA) will push film until it starts to smoke and sizzle. You can see my unpushed 1600 and +2 pushed 3200 shots elsewhere in this blog.
All this development (no pun intended) comes from their movie-film research, so we’re dependent on that for new offerings. However it would seem to make sense for Kodak to come up with film that rates a little higher, such as 1600 or 3200 in color. That would then fill the gap a little better, and keep film competitive with the new high ISO dSLR offerings.
And where’s Fujifilm in all of this? They’re taking a beating in the film-tech department.