Closest Current Equivalent to 400UC

Back in the day, when I shot C-41, my choice was often Kodak 400 Ultra Color(Portra 400UC).

I loved the colors and just overall look of the film.

What would you all judge to be the closest current production equivalent? Portra 400 gives similar color rendering, but often to me ends up both a bit too warm and too low contrast for my liking. I've not tried the current Gold 200, although examples I see of it seem VERY warm. I'm open to anything reasonably available. For the times I tend to use C41, ASA 400 is normally preferred...

I would be surprised if any other film was more similar to one type of portra than another type of portra, and sadly there are not very many ISO 400 films in production now to choose from.

I can’t remember if portra UC used Vision2 or Vision3 technology. Maybe portra 800 which is Vision2 based could be more similar in some ways. You could also try one of the kodak Vision3 movie films. They are pretty distinct from portra 400 while using similar technology. There are a number of companies that respool it for 135. There’s also cinestill 400D which is basically the same movie film but manufactured without the remjet layer so it’s easier to process, though that does cause it to show some halation.

Assuming that you are (or have) optically printed, of course if a scanned image you can change the color and increase contrast. I think you might want to try the current version and use a polarizer to cool down the color and increase contrast just a bit.

Paul Howell said:

Assuming that you are (or have) optically printed, of course if a scanned image you can change the color and increase contrast.

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That's right.

Ben Hutcherson said:

examples I see of it seem VERY warm

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If these examples are shown online, they're virtually always scans from negative. The color balance was either automatically rendered or adjusted to taste by someone in the imaging chain. You can print Portra cool, warm, magenta, cyan or yellow just like anything else.

_T_ said:

You could also try one of the kodak Vision3 movie films.

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That's a low-contrast, low-saturation route. I think it's the opposite of where Ben wants to go.

_T_ said:

I can’t remember if portra UC used Vision2 or Vision3 technology.

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Neither, probably...
Firstly, it's doubtful the cine films were technology leaders at that point. I think there's a clear statement (by Joe Manthey maybe? ex Kodak emulsion engineer) who indicated that still film served as the technology pull, so it would have seen innovations/new technologies implemented before cine film.
More importantly, the "X is based on Y" reasoning I sometimes see is problematic from an R&D perspective. Look at technologies like a well-stocked larder. When you're going to bake a cake, you're going to take ingredients from this larder depending on what kind of cake you want. Now, imagine you invented a new "strawberry flavor" ingredient because you figure people will like it. So on that day, you decide you're going to bake some nice muffins with that ingredient. The next day, you use it in a cake. Does that mean the cake is based on the muffins, because they both use the new strawberry flavor? What the demand on day one would have been for cake, and not for muffins? Would then the muffins have ended up being based on the cake instead of vice versa? In reality, neither is the case. Both are based on the same technology, and that technology was developed in response to a perceived market requirement. The technology then ended up in the first opportune product in the roadmap that would benefit from the new tech, whose development effort wouldn't be harmed (too much) by the inclusion of this new technology, where the market requirements made sense etc.

What you can obviously say is that films from the same manufacturer tend to share certain technology traits, and there will generally be some similarities between products from roughly the same era. Then again, there will also be plenty more similarities between films from entirely different eras and entirely different manufacturers....
Note, finally, that the Vision film stocks are ECN-2/CD-3 products, not C41. They do share technological similarities with C41 color still film (see above) and yet they are fundamentally different in other ways.

To answer Ben's question:
1: If this is a hybrid workflow, shoot whatever regular C41 400 speed film you can get your hands on and adjust color and contrast to taste.
2: If printing optically, things are a little more complicated. For 'punch', try something like Gold 200 and overdevelop it and expose at somewhere between 200 and 400. You'll see contrast and saturation go up - but also grain and acutance. Or...just shoot Portra 400 and print on something like Fuji DPII. That gives plenty of punch already and saturation and looks absolutely nothing like most Portra scans I see people post online (hence my earlier remarks...)

koraks said:

Neither, probably...
Firstly, it's doubtful the cine films were technology leaders at that point. I think there's a clear statement (by Joe Manthey maybe? ex Kodak emulsion engineer) who indicated that still film served as the technology pull, so it would have seen innovations/new technologies implemented before cine film.
More importantly, the "X is based on Y" reasoning I sometimes see is problematic from an R&D perspective. Look at technologies like a well-stocked larder. When you're going to bake a cake, you're going to take ingredients from this larder depending on what kind of cake you want. Now, imagine you invented a new "strawberry flavor" ingredient because you figure people will like it. So on that day, you decide you're going to bake some nice muffins with that ingredient. The next day, you use it in a cake. Does that mean the cake is based on the muffins, because they both use the new strawberry flavor? What the demand on day one would have been for cake, and not for muffins? Would then the muffins have ended up being based on the cake instead of vice versa? In reality, neither is the case. Both are based on the same technology, and that technology was developed in response to a perceived market requirement. The technology then ended up in the first opportune product in the roadmap that would benefit from the new tech, whose development effort wouldn't be harmed (too much) by the inclusion of this new technology, where the market requirements made sense etc.

What you can obviously say is that films from the same manufacturer tend to share certain technology traits, and there will generally be some similarities between products from roughly the same era. Then again, there will also be plenty more similarities between films from entirely different eras and entirely different manufacturers....
Note, finally, that the Vision film stocks are ECN-2/CD-3 products, not C41. They do share technological similarities with C41 color still film (see above) and yet they are fundamentally different in other ways.

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Your R&D analogy is very apt and insightful. I sat near the fellow who designed the original Portra films. This was happening simultaneously with the development of APS film, and I’m sure he was encouraged to use as much common technology as possible. However, these were “muffin and cake” products with different goals, so technology overlap likely occurred in only a broad, “strawberry flavor” sense. And then there was the need for the imprimatur stamp of the designer(s). At Kodak the major film types – color neg, cine, slide, and B&W – were designed and developed in silos, i.e., the people involved generally stayed within a single film type, and because of that not many specific components were shared across platforms with the possible exception of color couplers. As an example, they may have been using T-grain emulsions but not the same ones. At the time, color neg was the tail that wagged the dog.

Thanks everyone.

FWIW, I do not currently print optically, and I do scan myself. In fact, not to get too deep into the hybrid workflow, but I'm a big user of Nikon scanners, and I'm actually quite excited that I recently bought and installed the aftermarket uncut roll adapter on my Coolscan 4000. I haven't had any film processed since getting it, so don't have any uncut rolls around(and am not currently set up with a wet darkroom so can't do B&W, especially as I've never been happy with commercial lab B&W). I have used the 4000 very little-I have the same generation technology in my 8000, but am afraid I'll miss some of the more advanced ICE features from the V, but we'll see!

When I did have a wet darkroom, and I'm hoping to soon have that set up again, I had always hoped to do RA-4. A lot of the inspiration for that was chancing into a Focomat V35 with a color head-I still was glad to have it as it saved me messing with contrast filters, but would love to learn color printing. I do shoot a decent bit of MF and occasional LF, but I'd be content to just be able to print color 35mm as a starting point(and I can look for a color head for my Beseler 23 and/or 45 later).

I've shot a decent bit of the current Portra, and I may just have to spend some time figuring out how to make my scans of Portra negs look like some of my old 400UC scans. I can probably get it close with the right pre-sets.

As for the scans I've scene of Gold-even shooting it in the 2005-2006, I felt like my lab prints would always come back almost with a yellow cast. I disliked it enough that I switched almost to Superia for a while before making 400UC my main C-41 stock. This was almost entirely using Wal-Mart's send off service(I was a high school/college student then, and $3 developing and printing made photography affordable) which I THINK was done on Frontier equipment. When I had "real" stuff to do, I had a local pro lab(in Lexington Kentucky) that printed optically, alhtough the only C41 I ever took them was 160NC and 160VC(they did tons of E6 for me). In any case, though, the yellow/gold cast seems to show in a lot of online scans I see...but there again a scan can be anything.

Long and short, though, it seems I need to just keep using Portra, or Ektar if a slower film is appropriate and I want less work to get get more color "pop."

Ben Hutcherson said:

it seems I need to just keep using Portra, or Ektar if a slower film is appropriate and I want less work to get get more color "pop."

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I think that's a very workable conclusion. I really couldn't recommend anything better at this point, in any case.

If "pop" is your goal, it would behoove* you to pay extra attention to the lighting conditions. A polarizing filter can help a lot as well.
"Pop" is basically a combination of colour saturation and contrast, and the light is everything.
(* I always enjoy it when I have an excuse to use "behoove" in a sentence )

jmrochester said:

Your R&D analogy is very apt and insightful. I sat near the fellow who designed the original Portra films. This was happening simultaneously with the development of APS film, and I’m sure he was encouraged to use as much common technology as possible. However, these were “muffin and cake” products with different goals, so technology overlap likely occurred in only a broad, “strawberry flavor” sense. And then there was the need for the imprimatur stamp of the designer(s). At Kodak the major film types – color neg, cine, slide, and B&W – were designed and developed in silos, i.e., the people involved generally stayed within a single film type, and because of that not many specific components were shared across platforms with the possible exception of color couplers. As an example, they may have been using T-grain emulsions but not the same ones. At the time, color neg was the tail that wagged the dog.

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I do undertsand that the competion with Fuji did result in a lot of tech being developed in both the Still and movie lines. it seems that the movie side went from EXR, to Vision, to Vision 2 and Vision 3 every couple of years. Once Fuji gave up on Movie film, new versions did mostly dry up.

the 2016 Data sheet for Portra 400 does claim it uses "Vision Technology" whatever that entails

getting back to the question, the ONLY Portra in 400 at the moment is Portra 400

Not the answer you want, but if you're willing to sacrifice the speed, Ektar 100 will give you more saturated color and cleaner hues, along with higher contrast, than any Portra product. There is nothing equivalent to it in 400 speed, never has been. It's probably the most color accurate CN film ever, provided you understand how to properly filter it for color temp balance issues - basically, almost the look of a slide film in a C41 product, and MUCH finer grained with higher acutance than Portra 400.

All the Portra series films are exactly that : PORTRAIT films "skintone" biassed and warmed, at the expense of certain other hues categories. Yes, one can futz around with digital tools afterwards and tweak the saturation and color balance somewhat; but you can't really clean up a certain amount of curve crossover muddiness deliberately engineered into these films for sake of skin and complexion renderings.

Kodak Gold just exaggerates all of that tendency. Has its own overtly warm "retro" look, red faces n' all.

I love the 400 VC. Tried the Ektar and it's too bold for me.

Yeah - it's a good idea to try both relative to personal taste. Too bad 160VC is no longer made, which was kinda in between.

Incorporation of "KODAK VISION Film technology" is not necessarily the same as giving results that look like the results from "KODAK VISION Film".
Outside of things like fine grain.