Portra 800
- Kodak Portra 800
The same warm, low saturation family one stop faster, with visible grain and a little more contrast.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
Portra 800 exists for the room you cannot light. It is a professional stock at 800 speed, so it keeps the wide latitude and the neutral skin of the family in places where a 400 speed film runs out of exposure.
It also handles mixed indoor light better than Portra 400. A tungsten bulb pushes Portra 400 hard toward orange. Portra 800 holds a face closer to neutral under the same bulb, which is why it lives in receptions, bars and back rooms.
How it works
Name the stock and the speed together. Ask for a warm colour negative at 800 speed with visible grain.
Put a light source in the scene. A tungsten bulb, a window, a string of lamps, a phone screen. The stock is defined by what it does in that light, so a prompt with no named light source has nothing to work with.
Steer the three carriers. Skin stays neutral and slightly warm under the bulb rather than orange. Green foliage comes back muted and a touch cooler than on Portra 400. A daylight sky comes back pale and grey-blue, not saturated.
When to use it
Use it indoors, at dusk, and at night without flash. Receptions, bars, kitchens, concerts and lit streets are its work.
Leave it alone in bright sun. The extra speed buys nothing there, and the extra grain and contrast only take away from what Portra 400 already does well.
Told apart from its neighbours
Portra 400 is the same look with finer grain, less contrast and a warmer answer to tungsten light. Pick 800 only when the light is low or the light is mixed.
CineStill 800T sits at the same speed in the same dark rooms, and the two are easy to confuse. Portra 800 is daylight balanced and its highlights are clean. CineStill 800T is tungsten balanced and every bright light carries a red glow. Cinema publishes Halation at /techniques/cinema/ as its own entry, and Portra 800 is the stock that does not have it.
Where it is used
Kodak has sold Portra 800 since the family launched in 1998. When Kodak remade Portra 400 in 2010 and Portra 160 in 2011, Portra 800 stayed as it was, so it is the oldest emulsion in the range. Wedding photographers load it for the reception after shooting the day on Portra 400, and it is a common choice for lit night streets where flash would ruin the scene.
- indoor wedding receptions
- night street photography
- Kodak Professional line since 1998
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own subject, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
<subject> indoors at night, shot on Kodak Portra 800, warm colour negative at 800 speed, visible grain, slightly more contrast than Portra 400, skin held neutral under mixed tungsten and window light, muted mid-green foliage outside the window, pale grey-blue sky, handheld
What goes wrong
The model returns a clean, noise free night photograph. That is a digital sensor, not an 800 speed film. Say visible grain, and say the shadows stay open rather than black.
The scene comes back warm all over, like Gold under a bulb. Say the skin is held neutral under the tungsten light, and keep the warmth in the lamps themselves.
Leave out
clean digital low light, noise reduction, heavy saturation, deep crushed blacks, bright midday sun
Watch for
Portra 800 is a low light stock. Put it in low light. In full sun it reads as a grainier Portra 400 and nothing more.
Questions
Shoot it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
