What is Portra 400 good for?

Kodak names portrait and fashion photography first, then nature, travel and outdoor photography “where the action is fast or the lighting cannot be controlled”. It is made for skin: soft contrast, fine grain for an ISO 400 film, and room to over- and underexpose.

Is Portra 400 fine grain?

For its speed, yes. Kodak gives a Print Grain Index of 37 for a 4 × 6 inch print from 35 mm, where 25 is the threshold of visible grain and four units is a just-noticeable difference. Portra 800 is 48 and Gold 200 is 44 on the same scale.

Should you overexpose Portra 400?

It takes it well: the negative keeps a straight curve to at least six and a half stops over the meter, so a lab can print a negative one to three stops overexposed back to normal, with slightly finer grain. Rating it at 200 is common advice. The pale, pastel look people call overexposed Portra comes mostly from how the negative was scanned, not from the extra light.

Can you push Portra 400?

Labs push it, but Kodak publishes no push data for Portra 400. Its push times and curves are for Portra 800 (EI 1600 and 3200). A one-stop push of a color negative mostly adds contrast: Kodak puts the speed gained at under a third of a stop.

Portra 400 or Portra 800?

Portra 400 for finer grain (Print Grain Index 37 against 48 from 35 mm) and daylight. Portra 800 for low light and long lenses: Kodak calls its underexposure latitude best in class and publishes pushes to EI 1600 and 3200.

Is Clack’s Portrait 400 the same as Portra 400?

No. It is a model of Portra 400’s published data (its curves, dyes and grain) printed on Kodak’s Portra Endura paper, run on the phone’s photo, so the lens and sensor are the phone’s. Clack is not affiliated with Kodak.

Film · Updated 31 October 2026

Kodak Portra 400

The film, its look, and how it was shot.

Kodak Portra 400 is Kodak Professional’s ISO 400 color negative film, made for portraits: natural skin, soft contrast, and what Kodak calls “the world’s finest grain high-speed color negative film” (a Print Grain Index of 37 for a 4 × 6 inch print from 35 mm). Its negative has room at both ends, a straight curve from about three and a half stops under the meter to at least six and a half over, so it forgives overexposure. It comes in 35 mm, 120 and sheets, is developed in C-41, and was made to be printed on Kodak’s Endura papers. The soft, pastel Portra of the internet is mostly a scan; a print of the same negative has deeper shadows and more contrast.

Below: Kodak’s data in a table, what the film looks like and why, overexposing and pushing it, shooting it at night, Portra 400 against Portra 800, Gold 200, UltraMax 400 and Ektar 100, Portra recipes, and Portrait 400 (based on Kodak Portra 400), the Clack film modeled on it.

01 · The film

Portra 400 by Kodak’s datasheet

Type	Color negative film, Kodak Professional, process C-41
Speed	ISO 400 in daylight or flash; 100 under 3200 K tungsten with an 80A filter, 125 under 3400 K photolamps with an 80B
Formats	135 (35 mm) and 120 roll film, sheets (4 × 5 in)
Grain	Print Grain Index 37 for a 4 × 6 in print from 35 mm, 59 at 8 × 10, 89 at 16 × 20; 25, 37 and 59 from 120
Long exposures	No filter or exposure correction from 1/10,000 s to 1 s
Printing	Made to print on Kodak Endura Premier papers; Kodak also calls it “ideal for scanning”
In sun	1/500 s at f/11 in bright sun with distinct shadows, f/16 on sand or snow, f/5.6 cloudy bright, f/4 in open shade

From Kodak’s technical data E-4050, January 2025. Kodak’s f/11 at 1/500 in bright sun is about three-quarters of a stop more light than the sunny 16 rule’s f/16 at 1/400 (our arithmetic): miss on the side of more light. The sunny 16 calculator does the rest.

02 · The look

What Portra 400 looks like, and why

Most of the look comes from two curves, the negative’s and the paper’s, and from dyes.

Soft contrast. The negative is low in contrast, a gamma of about 0.5 to 0.6, with its three layers parallel, so grays stay gray from shadow to highlight. The print supplies the contrast, and Portra Endura is the softest of Kodak’s three Endura papers for it (Portra, Supra, Ultra).
Skin first. Kodak’s sheet promises “spectacular skin tones”. Film’s layers overlap in what they see, which is a lever Kodak shapes for skin; in Clack’s model it moves skin from pink towards peach.
Color as dye. A richer color is more dye and so darker, and every color fades into the paper’s white and black. In Clack’s model of the print, yellows turn golden, foliage olive, blues a little teal.
Fine grain for 400. Visible in a large print, a texture rather than specks in a small one. More in what is film grain.

Portra 400’s three layers as Clack’s engine holds them: density above the film’s base (red, green and blue layers) against exposure, 0 at the meter’s mid gray. The data is spektrafilm’s digitization of Kodak’s E-4050 curves (CC BY-SA 4.0), sampled every half stop. Below about three and a half stops under, the toe flattens into clear film; above, one straight line with no shoulder before six and a half stops over.

Print or scan

Almost every Portra 400 picture online is a negative scanned at a lab (on a Frontier or Noritsu scanner), not a print: softer contrast, open shadows, pastel color, each set by the scanner’s operator. An optical print on Endura paper of the same negative is deeper and more contrasty. Neither is the wrong one; they are two ends of the same film. Clack prints.

03 · Exposure

Overexposing Portra 400, and shooting it at 200

Common advice is to rate Portra 400 at 200, or to meter for the shadows and let the rest go over. The film takes it: a negative one, two or three stops dense is still on the straight part of its curve, and a lab prints it back to a normal mid gray. What changes is small: a touch more contrast in the highlights and finer grain, since a color negative’s grain gets finer with more light. A stop under still prints close to normal; two stops under is where Portra shows strain: the blacks lift into a muddy gray and the grain coarsens.

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Rated 1600

Rated 800

Box speed, 400

Rated 200

Rated 100

Clack’s model of Portra 400 on Portra Endura, a gray card from four stops under to five over the meter’s mid gray, rated at five speeds and each printed back to the same mid gray, as a lab does. Rated 800, 200 and 100 print almost as box speed does; rated 1600 loses its blacks. The engine’s output, before grain.

So the pale, washed-out look sold as “overexposed Portra” is not the light: it is the scan, set soft and bright. If that is the look you want, ask the lab for a flat, bright scan, or edit for it. If you want the print, overexposing costs nothing but speed.

04 · Push

Pushing Portra 400

Labs will push Portra 400 a stop or two, but Kodak publishes no push data for it. Kodak’s push curves and times are for Portra 800: EI 1600 and 3200, the C-41 developer at 3 min 45 s and 4 min 15 s against 3 min 15 s normally. Kodak’s page on pushing its color negative films puts the gain from a one-stop push at “speed increases of less than a 1/3 of a stop”. A push mostly adds contrast and grain; the shadows stay thin.

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Pulled one (Soft)

Normal

Pushed one (Hard)

Pushed two (Harder)

Clack’s model of Portra 400 developed four ways at box speed, the gray card from four stops under to five over. Each layer gains the density Kodak’s Portra 800 gains from the same push (lost, for the pull): an estimate, since Kodak gives no curve for Portra 400 pushed or for any C-41 pull.

For low light the better answer is a faster film: Portra 800 is a stop faster at box speed with a Print Grain Index of 48, and Kodak publishes its pushes.

05 · Night

Portra 400 at night

Portra 400 is balanced for daylight. Under tungsten lamps (3200 K) Kodak’s answer is an 80A blue filter and a speed of 100, “for best results without special printing”: without the filter, the print needs correcting for the lamps’ orange. Kodak needs no correction for exposures from 1/10,000 s to 1 s, so handheld night scenes need no reciprocity sums. Round street lights the film shows only a faint glow: its anti-halation layer stops most of the light that bounces back through it. CineStill 800T is the film bought for the red glow (see what is halation).

Three panels of a small round light and a bright window on a dark field: no glow; a faint warm glow; a strong red-orange glow round both. — A render, not a photo: a drawn lamp and window on a dark field, through a desktop port of Clack’s halation and its Portrait 400 model, at 100 % of a 12 MP still. Left: no halation, for comparison. Middle: the anti-halation layer in place, as Portra 400 is sold. Right: the layer removed, as CineStill does to cinema film and no lab can do to Portra.

06 · Against

Portra 400 vs Portra 800, Gold 200, UltraMax 400 and Ektar 100

Film	Speed	Made for	Grain, 4 × 6 from 35 mm	Kodak’s push data
Portra 400	ISO 400, professional	“The world’s finest grain high-speed color negative film”; skin tones	37	None published
Portra 800	ISO 800, professional	“Best-in-class underexposure latitude”, for long lenses and low light	48	EI 1600 and 3200
Gold 200	ISO 200, consumer	Latitude from two stops under to three over; warm by reviewers’ consensus	44	None published
UltraMax 400	ISO 400, consumer	Warm by reviewers’ consensus	46	–
Ektar 100	ISO 100, professional	“Ultra-vivid” color	Under 25	None published

Grain is Kodak’s Print Grain Index: 25 is the threshold of visible grain, four units a just-noticeable difference. Kodak’s datasheets; the warmth of Gold and UltraMax is reviewers’ consensus, not Kodak’s claim.

Portra 400 vs Portra 800. The same family. 800 is a stop faster and 11 units grainier (about three just-noticeable steps, our arithmetic), with Kodak’s best underexposure latitude and published pushes. Under tungsten with an 80A, 800 is rated 200 and 400 is rated 100.
Portra 400 vs Gold 200 and UltraMax 400. Gold and UltraMax are consumer films: grainier (44 and 46), more saturated, and warm by most reviewers’ accounts. Portra is softer and made for skin.
Portra 400 vs Ektar 100. Ektar is two stops slower, with finer grain than any of them and much stronger color: a landscape film where Portra is a portrait one.

Three of these films are in Clack, and its models print them like this:

Clack film	Three stops of scene print over	Color (mean chroma)	Light skin, hue
Portrait 400 (based on Kodak Portra 400)	4.2 stops	50	58°
Golden 200 (based on Kodak Gold 200)	4.8 stops	54	64°
Minilab 400 (based on Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400)	5.4 stops	54	57°

Our measurements of Clack’s film models on a ColorChecker chart and a gray scale, each film on its own paper (Portra Endura, Kodak Edge, Crystal Archive). The chart itself has a mean chroma of 45; a lower skin hue is pinker, a higher one more yellow.

07 · Recipes

Portra 400 recipes for Fujifilm, Lightroom and phones

A “Portra 400 Fujifilm recipe” is a Fujifilm film simulation with settings tuned by eye until its JPEGs resemble Portra pictures. Some are close in feel; none comes from the film’s data, and Fujifilm says its own Classic Chrome “is not designed to reproduce an existing film”. More in Fujifilm recipes.

In Lightroom or any editor the levers are the ones above: one gentle curve that never clips the highlights, no shadows lifted area by area, skin warmed a little towards yellow, saturated colors let go darker, and a fine grain. How to make photos look like film has the steps.

08 · Clack

Portra 400 on an Android phone: Portrait 400

Clack is a film camera app for Android. One of its six films is Portrait 400 (based on Kodak Portra 400): Portra 400’s published curves and dyes (as digitized by spektrafilm), printed on Kodak’s Portra Endura paper, with its own grain and halation drawn before the curve. The look is in the finder as you frame and baked into the JPEG.

Control	Steps	On Portrait 400
White balance	Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, Custom	Auto corrects the light’s color; Daylight keeps lamplight and evening sun warm, as daylight film does; Custom is measured off something white
Shift	Warmer or cooler, greener or pinker	Color filters at the printer, 2 CC a step
Contrast	Soft, Normal, Hard, Harder	Pulled one stop to pushed two, from Portra 800’s push data (an estimate: Kodak gives none for Portra 400)
Color	Soft, Standard, Vivid	The paper: Portra Endura (as it comes), Supra Endura, Ultra Endura
Grain	Fine, Normal, Coarse	Portra’s own at Normal, coarser as the light falls
Halation	Normal, Strong	The anti-halation layer in place, or removed

The Color control is Kodak’s three papers in Kodak’s own order: Portra Endura (low contrast, moderate saturation), Supra (moderate, higher) and Ultra (higher, enhanced). Clack comes with two recipes on it: Warm Skin, the film as it comes, and Golden Hour, at Daylight so evening sun stays golden.

The film base: On Android phones whose camera offers a contrast curve, Clack takes the frame flat, with the phone’s local tone mapping and color enhancement off, before the film. On other phones the films run on the phone’s own frame.
Grain: Sized as 35 mm film’s, Portra’s own amount, and stronger the higher the ISO the camera needed.
In Clack Pro: Portrait 400 is one of the four films in Clack Pro. For the first seven days everything is open; after that the free tier keeps Minilab 400 and Press 400.

A model of the film’s data on a phone’s photo, not film. Tested mostly on the CMF Phone 2 Pro.

AndroidComing soon to Google Play. More about Clack

Questions

What is Portra 400 good for?: Kodak names portrait and fashion photography first, then nature, travel and outdoor photography “where the action is fast or the lighting cannot be controlled”. It is made for skin: soft contrast, fine grain for an ISO 400 film, and room to over- and underexpose.
Is Portra 400 fine grain?: For its speed, yes. Kodak gives a Print Grain Index of 37 for a 4 × 6 inch print from 35 mm, where 25 is the threshold of visible grain and four units is a just-noticeable difference. Portra 800 is 48 and Gold 200 is 44 on the same scale.
Should you overexpose Portra 400?: It takes it well: the negative keeps a straight curve to at least six and a half stops over the meter, so a lab can print a negative one to three stops overexposed back to normal, with slightly finer grain. Rating it at 200 is common advice. The pale, pastel look people call overexposed Portra comes mostly from how the negative was scanned, not from the extra light.
Can you push Portra 400?: Labs push it, but Kodak publishes no push data for Portra 400. Its push times and curves are for Portra 800 (EI 1600 and 3200). A one-stop push of a color negative mostly adds contrast: Kodak puts the speed gained at under a third of a stop.
Portra 400 or Portra 800?: Portra 400 for finer grain (Print Grain Index 37 against 48 from 35 mm) and daylight. Portra 800 for low light and long lenses: Kodak calls its underexposure latitude best in class and publishes pushes to EI 1600 and 3200.
Is Clack’s Portrait 400 the same as Portra 400?: No. It is a model of Portra 400’s published data (its curves, dyes and grain) printed on Kodak’s Portra Endura paper, run on the phone’s photo, so the lens and sensor are the phone’s. Clack is not affiliated with Kodak.

Sources

Kodak, Portra, Gold, UltraMax, Ektar and Endura are Kodak’s; CineStill is CineStill’s; Fujifilm and Classic Chrome are Fujifilm’s. Clack is not affiliated with any of them.