Portra 400VC/NC is no more

will keep an eye out for this and run a few rolls 🙂 i ran a few rolls of 400VC and, in my limited colour experience, these where the best 35mm colour photographs I have - though they where a little too contrasty for my taste. so this looks to be perfect, excellent.

it's refreshing to hear of advancements in film still being made.
 
I think it sounds like a good move. I love 400NC and 400VC and am always torn over which one I should use. This sounds awesome. A bit more punch in the colors, a lot of range still, and even finer grain.
 
Good on Kodak if they are bringing out a replacement ... but the rest seem to have dropped the ball as far as high speed colour film is concerrned IMO!

This is where digital has really had a dramatic effect and you can see why. It's pretty hard to shoot colour in really low light with film and even come close to what the new generation sensors are capable of.
 
I never did get around to trying the 400VC. I love 400NC and always hesitated in buying the 400VC because I liked the 400NC so much. I guess I won't be torn about my buying decision in the future lol.
 
I might end up trying this. In 4x5. I have a hate/hate relationship with C-41 films, but if the scanning issues are improved I might switch back.
 
Three words - THANK YOU KODAK!

There have been some amazing advances in film on the motion picture side. A lot of pros have started spooling the Vision motion picture films themselves to use in 35mm still cameras, so it's great to see the technology migrate over to photographic side.
 
hmm...I'd have been happy if they had only improved NC and discontinued VC altoghether. Let's just hope the new Portra is not too saturated.

Also, I wonder what will happen with the ISO 160 line of Portra films. Doesn't make much sense to keep around both types so I suppose they'll replace that one, too, in the near future.
 
seems like everybody is raving about Kodak and this new Portra. But: this is a loss, no more 8x10 & 5x7 400 Kodak film from then on (!), just one option apart from 2, and believe me, there still are people wet printing color, at least over here and with wet-printing choosing from NC & VC is truly benefitial.

To me Kodak is driven by this obsesive contemporary phantasma called "shareholder value", and not about customer satisfaction.
No TX 320 in 120 anymore, no 400 asa color 5x7 & 8x10 and asfaik they discontinued PX125 in the larger sheet film sizes as well. No NC and no VC 400...

I think this sucks.
Michael
 
Roger/Michael - it does suck in a way. Loss of options is a bad thing. The positive bit about it is instead of Kodak just killing NC, VC, or both, they put some money into it and came out with an improved film. And they bothered to tell us about it. What is the situation with Fuji's pro films again?

The whole bit about being driven by bean counters/crapping on customers is wearing a bit thin on me. The simple fact of the matter is that we aren't buying enough of some of these products for Kodak to make much if any money off of them. So they get canned.

Re: large format - Kodak is still willing to do custom orders in these sizes:
APUG

To put that in perspective, I think that's about 150 boxes of film.
 
I think it's probably a positive thing, to replace two good film with one great one, in principle, is a good thing.

Also saturation is so easily altered in PP, it seems wasteful to have two different films to achieve that. Obviously some people are doing colour enlargements and cannot PP on a computer, so for them, not so good.
 
kknox said:
The good news is Kodak is not just dropping the Portra line of film, they are coming out with a replacement. Film still lives, and we have choices.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I've always preferred NC over VC and I'm not a big fan of Ektar. I'm just glad that Portra isn't disappearing altogether and that it's still available in 4x5. I wet print my Portra so am a bit disappointed to see NC go - but I can live with it. The main thing is that there's still a fast C-41 4x5 film out there.

Here on RFF and other fora there is often much discussion of lenses and cameras. GAS is pervasive and I'm as guilty as anyone. Next time we feel the urge to add a lens or body to our arsenals we should all pledge instead to fill the fridge with more film and shoot with our current kit!
 
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