My wife recently challenged me to create a Film Simulation Recipe that mimics the aesthetic of Kodak Portra 800 film that Peter McKinnon has been sharing on Instagram and YouTube. I’m really drawn to his analog photography—I think they’re some of his best photographs. While there were plenty of examples of his Portra 800 to examine, I found it to be a difficult endeavor to replicate on my Fujifilm cameras.
As I’ve said many times, one film can produce many different looks based on a whole host of factors: how shot (film format, lens, exposure, filters, light, etc.), how developed (push/pull, brand of chemicals, freshness of chemicals, timing, temperature and pH of the water, etc.), how printed (paper, chemicals, timing, filters, etc.) and/or how scanned (brand of scanner, correction profiles, post-editing, etc.). Even within one photographer’s collection of one specific emulsion, there can be some noticeable variances. In the specific case of Peter McKinnon and his Kodak Portra 800, there is indeed significant divergences in the exact look of different pictures.
Before I get any deeper into this, let me give a brief history of Kodak Portra 800 and my Film Simulation Recipes that mimic this film. Kodak introduced Portra 800 in 1998 at the same time as Portra 160 and Portra 400. Portra 160 and Portra 400 both originally came in a “VC” (vivid color) and “NC” (neutral color) versions, which were later merged into in-between emulsions that still exists today; however, Portra 800 only ever came in one variety. I don’t know if it is true, but I read that Portra 800 was based on the older Vericolor/Vision2 technology, while Portra 160 and Portra 400 were based on T-Grain/Vision3 advancements. In any event, all of these films have been tweaked and updated by Kodak several times over the years. While it has become increasingly expensive, all three ISO versions of Portra are still being manufactured today by Kodak. In fact, the current version of Lomography 800 is supposedly repacked Portra 800 (although it might be a run that didn’t pass quality control).
My original Kodak Portra 800 Film Simulation Recipe was a joint venture between myself and Thomas Schwab based on “memory color” (as Fujifilm likes to put it) of the film. The next version, Kodak Portra 800 v2, was created entirely by Thomas Schwab after he shot a roll of the film and his Fujifilm X-Pro3 camera side-by-side. This new third version was created by me after carefully examining Peter McKinnon’s pictures of Kodak Portra 800 film.
I divided Peter’s Portra 800 pictures into seven groups. Each group contained photos that seemed similar in overall aesthetics to each other. The commonality within each group tended to be (for the most part) the lighting condition that the film was shot in (although it was not universally so). I picked one group, and tried to replicate the look of it as closely as possible using the options available on my Fujifilm X-T5 (or should I say my Kodak Retina camera?), choosing similar light and colors for my pictures. Once I was satisfied that I was close, I used those settings to create images similar to the photographs in the other groups; however, this is where it fell apart. One Recipe was not able to replicate multiple aesthetics from the same film, which is not surprising. I made a bunch of small modifications until I had one Film Simulation Recipe that was a fairly faithful facsimile to multiple groups of Peter’s Portra 800 pictures. I say “fairly faithful” because compromises had to be made in order to match multiple groups. These settings are in the ballpark of four of the seven groups (and most similar to just two), and not especially close to the other three, unfortunately. This is not a 100% faithful recreation of any of his picture aesthetics, but in being less faithful to one specific look, I was better able to replicate the film examples overall.
This new Kodak Portra 800 v3 Film Simulation Recipe is intended for fifth-generation Fujifilm X-Trans cameras, which (as of this writing) are the X-H2s, X-H2, X-T5, X-S20 (yes, the X-S20), and the upcoming X100VI. To make this Recipe compatible with some X-Trans IV models—specifically, the X-T4, X-S10, X-E4, and X-T30 II—I simply set Color Chrome FX Blue to Weak instead of Off, since X-Trans V cameras render blue more deeply on some film simulations. For those with the X-Pro3 or X100V, consider setting Shadow to 0 instead of 0.5. I do think that the original Kodak Portra 800 Recipe, as well as Kodak Portra 400 v2, are not very far off from Peter’s pictures, and could be good alternatives.
The Kodak Portra 800 v3 Film Simulation Recipe is great for both golden-hour and midday light. While it is intended for sunny daylight conditions, it does pretty well in shade, too. It’s alright for overcast days, depending on the specific cloud cover conditions. It’s great for natural-light indoors, and surprisingly decent for nighttime photography, but I’d avoid it for artificial light scenarios with warm bulbs. This Recipe is fairly versatile, despite it’s warm Kodak-like colors. In the right light, it can look pretty darn close to some of the Kodak Portra 800 scans that Peter McKinnon has been sharing on his social media channels. Interestingly, there’s also similarities to some of the Kodak Portra 400 images in Kyle McDougall’s An American Mile series. I have a feeling that this will quickly become a favorite option for many of you—personally, I really love this one!
Film Simulation: Classic Chrome
Dynamic Range: DR400
Grain Effect: Strong, Large
Color Chrome Effect: Strong
Color Chrome FX Blue: Off (X-Trans V); Weak (X-Trans IV)
White Balance: 6600K, -1 Red & -3 Blue
Highlight: -2
Shadow: -0.5
Color: +3
Sharpness: -2
High ISO NR: -4
Clarity: -3
ISO: Auto, up to ISO 6400
Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +1 1/3 (typically)
Example photographs, all camera-made JPEGs captured using this Kodak Portra 800 v3 Film Simulation Recipe on my Fujifilm X-E4:
Example photographs, all camera-made JPEGs captured using this Kodak Portra 800 v3 Film Simulation Recipe on my Fujifilm X-T5:
Comparison:
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I like all 3 versions! (Would be even better if there were side-by-side photos of the same shots taken with all 3 portra versions to compare.)
Hopefully it will be sunny in Athens, Greece in early April so I can give it a test drive (with my new XF18 :D). Now I have to decide which slot to add it to… (Below are my current T5’s slots. C0,C1,C6 and C7 are non-negotiable!)
C0-REALA ACE
C1-PACIFIC BLUES
C2-KODAK VISION3 250D v2
C3-POLAROID (XTRANS4)
C4-KOJAK GOLD (XTRANS4, JUSTIN)
C5-SANTACOLOR (XTRANS4)
C6-KODAK GOLD 200
C7-FUJICOLOR PRO 400H (XTRANS4)
Thanks, Ritchie.
That might be a tough decision…
I’ll publish a side-by-side very soon. 😀
OK, I see the comparison photos now. The latest version is much warmer for sure. Geez, now it’s even harder to decide. Guess I have to test all 4.
Take a look at this:
https://fujixweekly.com/2024/02/15/comparing-kodak-portra-800-recipes/
It has a STRONG filmic look! I’ll tell others, this is the best recipe of all variants! A keeper. Period!
P.S. For me, it replaces ALL the Portras… starting with 160 and up.
I’m so glad that you like it! 😀
In which steps goes Kelvin up and down? Because for me, to have this one as the Portra that rules them all, I have to reduce the color temperature in GIMP with 580 units. So, it should be 6020K…
Actually, extracting 600 is just fine…. so I suppose, the Kelvin would be 6000…
It’s always ok to “season to taste” any Recipe to make it work better for you. 😀
They changed the pot and the flower in it… you can see it in the McCurry Kodachrome (“Orange Tables and Leaf” photo), the pot has a different shape.
They sure did, didn’t they?! I wonder why? Great eye for details!
I’m not that good.. too old for that. I compared the photos to evaluate the recipes and then it was easy to see…
Hey Ritchie, I just got a xt5 and was excited to load up this simulation and few others. I noticed after I took each picture it took a second to store on the card and when I didn’t use the simulation there was no waiting to store. Via a process of elimination I figured out it was the clarity setting that causes it to take a second to store. I’m using Lexar 1800x cards. Do I need to use faster cards or will that not make a difference? For now I’ve just set clarity on 0.
Clarity set to anything other than 0 causes a Storing pause, which is about the same amount of time to advance to the next frame on a film camera. I just use it to slow myself down and be more purposeful, but I definitely understand it being an annoyance. There’s not much you can do to speed it up. I think Boost mode helps a tiny bit, but not much. I don’t believe your SD Card will have much to do with it, unless you have a slow SD Card (which I don’t think you do).
I address this issue in Common Question #10 in the link below:
https://fujixweekly.com/2023/07/13/answers-to-the-10-most-common-fujifilm-how-to-questions/
New to this world, have an XT5 and would like to use this recipe. How do I manually select Kelvin WB? Don’t see that as an option. I suppose “cloudy” with the Red and Blue shifts suggested here would be close?
You are looking for “K Color Temperature”—it’s right above Daylight.
https://fujifilm-dsc.com/en/manual/x-t5/menu_shooting/image_quality_setting/#white_balance
Loving the site and everything with it. Purchased x100v last year and still in love with the vintage cool tones look. Would Portra 800 v2 or v3 be better option for me? I also have Black pro mist filter applied.
Although I initially didn’t think there was much difference between the two, I noticed the recipes have a lot of differences between two. Appreciate any input!!
This might be helpful:
https://fujixweekly.com/2024/02/15/comparing-kodak-portra-800-recipes/
Looks amazing! Is this possible to recreate on an X-T3?
You could use a diffusion filter instead of Clarity. Maybe 0 Shadow? Ignore Color Chrome Weak and Grain size, since the X-T3 doesn’t have those. It won’t be exactly the same, but should be fairly close.
Hi. Amazing recipe! Any suggestions to create this for a XT30? Just as close as it can get to this recipe? Thank you for sharing.
So Grain should be set to Strong. Shadow should probably be set to either -1 or 0 (you’ll have to decide which you prefer). Use a 10% CineBloom or 1/4 pro mist filter since you don’t have Clarity. I hope this helps!