Kodak Portra
Encyclopedia
Kodak Portra is a family of daylight-balanced professional colour negative films
made mainly for portrait
and wedding applications. The films come in three speeds — 160, 400, and 800 ISO — with the 160 speed available as "natural color" (NC) and "vivid color" (VC) varieties.
Despite the supplement of digital photography
the film has been upgraded by newer versions several times in the last few years to improve grain and scanning performance.
Kodak also lists improved scanning performance as a feature, but the film still retains an orange mask for optical printing. The "NC" and "VC" varieties of the film were introduced to address the need for different levels of contrast and color saturation when printing, and adjusting these image attributes tend to be more difficult with traditional color darkroom printing than with digital imaging. This has influenced a decision to merge the two varieties of the film based on the assumption that most prints are currently made from digital scans which allow for these adjustments to be carried out digitally.
Negative (photography)
In photography, a negative may refer to three different things, although they are all related.-A negative:Film for 35 mm cameras comes in long narrow strips of chemical-coated plastic or cellulose acetate. As each image is captured by the camera onto the film strip, the film strip advances so that...
made mainly for portrait
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
and wedding applications. The films come in three speeds — 160, 400, and 800 ISO — with the 160 speed available as "natural color" (NC) and "vivid color" (VC) varieties.
Despite the supplement of digital photography
Digital photography
Digital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...
the film has been upgraded by newer versions several times in the last few years to improve grain and scanning performance.
2010 Portra 400 Upgrade
Kodak introduced a new version of the Portra 400 film which replaced the NC and VC versions in late 2010. The new film incorporates a number of technological advances from the Kodak Vision line of motion pictures films. Kodak lists finer grain, improved sharpness over 400 NC and naturally rendered skin tones as some of the improvements over the existing NC and VC line.Kodak also lists improved scanning performance as a feature, but the film still retains an orange mask for optical printing. The "NC" and "VC" varieties of the film were introduced to address the need for different levels of contrast and color saturation when printing, and adjusting these image attributes tend to be more difficult with traditional color darkroom printing than with digital imaging. This has influenced a decision to merge the two varieties of the film based on the assumption that most prints are currently made from digital scans which allow for these adjustments to be carried out digitally.