Film Format: 120/220 Film Colour & Type: Colour Negative (C-41) ISO: 400 Grain: Fine Contrast: Normal and High Colour Balance: Daylight-Balanced Film (≈5500K) Exposure Latitude: Wide / Very Wide Latitude DX Coding: No Film Development Process: Colour (C-41) Perfect for: 👪 Portraits, 🏔️ Landscapes, and 🏛️ Architecture
Description
Capture stunning, lifelike images with Kodak Portra 400 120 film. This medium-speed, colour negative film is perfect for portraits and well-lit scenes, producing natural skin tones and rich, vibrant colours.
With a fine grain structure and excellent sharpness, this film is a favourite among professional and amateur photographers alike. Shop with us to get your hands on a roll of Kodak Portra 400 film in medium format and see for yourself the exceptional quality it has to offer.
What makes Portra 400 so good?
High image quality: Kodak Portra 400 film is known for its fine grain and excellent colour reproduction, which makes it ideal for capturing high-quality images.
Wide exposure latitude: The film has a wide exposure latitude, which means it can handle a wide range of lighting conditions. This makes it ideal for use in a variety of situations.
Natural skin tones: Kodak Portra 400 film is known for its exceptional skin tones, which are rendered with a natural, lifelike quality. This makes it ideal for shooting portraits.
Consistent and reliable performance: This film is known for its consistent and reliable performance, which means you can count on it to deliver stunning results every time.
Versatility: Kodak Portra 400 film is suitable for a wide range of applications, including portraits, landscapes, and everyday scenes.
Overall, Kodak Portra 400 film is a high-quality film that is perfect for photographers who want to capture beautiful, lifelike images with natural skin tones and excellent colour reproduction.
Film Details
Kodak Portra 400 was launched in 1998 and replaced the older 'Vericolor' emulsion in Kodak's range. Originally there were two variants of Portra: 'Vivid Colour' and 'Natural Colour' but a technical update in 2010 made the difference redundant with a new and improved film.
Portra is famous for its outstanding replication of skin tones. The 400 speed is the most versatile of the family (there is also a Portra 160 and a Portra 800) and it can be pushed/pulled while still delivering gorgeous results.
When you look at the ratings for this emulsion online, well over 90% of them are five-star. "Fantastic skin tones" are referenced in many of them! In fact Portra 400 is the top recommended film for portrait on our entire store.
Of course that doesn't mean that you have to just use it for portraits and everything else will look terrible - there are many gorgeous architectural, landscape, pet photos in the reviews as well.
Ultimately this is a premium film with very powerful chemistry, and the photos it will produce for you are going to be beautiful
When you buy your camera film from us we can ship it across the UK, Europe, USA, New Zealand, Australia and Canada (more countries planned soon!) So buy your Kodak Portra 400 120 Film today and dive back into the fun of 120 film photography!
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I shot this film in a coastal location using my Holga 120N. I shot in a variety of light conditions and exposure times using B mode. Kodak Portra is known for reliaility, but at ISO 400, I’d say in a Holga it still needs bright even lighting conditions to avoid underexposing part of the picture.
This film has a reputation that truly lives up to its legacy.
Though increasingly rare and expensive, it continues to hold a sacred place in the hearts of many professionals I know, and for good reason. There is something deeply intentional about how it renders light. It doesn’t rush to impress; it breathes, it listens, it honours tone and atmosphere in a way that feels human.
I photographed this particular roll on a Contax 645 and metered in-camera at ISO 400. The film handled every nuance of contrast and exposure with composure, highlights rolled off gracefully, shadows retained their quiet detail, and the midtones carried that unmistakable neutrality that makes this stock a benchmark for colour harmony.
What continues to strike me most is its emotional intelligence. It doesn’t exaggerate warmth or coolness, it simply interprets the world as it is, with honesty, calm, and refinement. Every frame feels cinematic yet restrained, luminous without ever being loud.
It’s easy to understand why, even at a premium, so many photographers still seek out this film. It rewards precision and care. It invites you to slow down, to meter deliberately, to trust in the interplay between light and feeling.
For me, this film represents the quiet craftsmanship that defines the soul of analogue photography; elegant, consistent, and effortlessly timeless.
