Kodak Portra 160 - 35mm Film

Portra 160 at the Museum

I used Kodak Portra 160 in a Pentax MX to take a few photos at the National Museum of Scotland accompanied by my partner and daughter. As usual I love the natural colours that Portra 160 produces. I ended up having to be very careful with setting up my shots as 160 ISO was a little slow for the interior of the Museum. The sample photo I have uploaded was taking with an f1.4 50mm Pentax-M lens set to f1.4. Even then I had to wedge myself against a railing to take a shake free exposure of a 15th of second. The colour and lack of overt grain in the resulting picture make the effort worth it. I have previously in 2025 used Portra 160 to take photos of wild flowers in the autumn sunshine. I would say that the film is more easily used in these conditions given its film speed and gives excellent natural results.

Perfect - Just price-gougingly expensive!

Come on guys. It's Portra. It's beautiful. We know it is. Fantastic skin tones. Beautifully soft, textured, sophisticated colours. Dreamy highlight rolloff that digital cameras lay awake at night fanaticising of coming close to replicating. What's not to like? Oh yes. The price. Since the massive price hikes of a few years back it's prohibitively expensive as a day to day film for all but the bourgeoisie and those shooting Vogue front covers. If you ever find some going cheap, stock up would be my advice. If you keep it in the fridge I wouldn't worry too much about it going slightly out of date. I'd rather risk that than waiting another few weeks/months and finding the price has once again gone to the moon. HODL guys. No but in all seriousness, any film shooter worth their salt needs to be familiar with Portra. It's top draw gear.

Portra 160

Wonderful film stock so true to life. Slow so needs the right light but when it's bright enough it's unbeatable