Shooting Expired Portra 160 NC
January 27, 2022Shooting Expired Portrait 160 NC is interesting, the NC stands for natural color and its true to its name. The characteristics of the film are low to moderate contrast, very fine grain, natural colors and pleasing skin tones. When this film was being produced Kodak was producing Portra NC and Portra VC in both 35mm and 120. The NC I have is in 120 and expired in 2007.
The film being 14-15 years old it would handle well in a 50-100 iso generally, but I do think the film I got was not stored as well as described and did better in the 15-25 iso range. Shooting expired film you want to overexpose 1 stop for every 10 years the film has been expired, I generally like over exposed photos so I tend to over expose by a stop either way with fresh film. Color negative film does really well overexposed and the Portra line has a wide range latitude.
I shot these before a shoot in the middle of summer, it was 100 degrees out in the middle of what felt like nowhere. The lot for this is actually a production set, its where Britney Spears shot the water parts for her “Work B**ch” music video. I knew I recognized it but couldn’t for the life of me remember where from. Back to the photos, these were bright and early around 9 am and the light was nice and harsh, so shooting at 15 iso was fairly easy(even in the shade). Shooting this low of an iso would’ve been a daunting task when I first started shooting film but with my shooting experience now, the steady weight of the Hasselblad 500C, and with the plethora of classic cars to frame 12 photos flew by.
The colors in these are subdued, the grain is very fine even after being expired for over a decade and would shoot this film again- I kinda have to I bought 2 pro packs of it.