Portra subjects

No, as them name indicates this is a portrait-only film. If you use it on other subjects your camera will explode. ;)

Thanks for the response. loved the exploding part. rotfl. :)

If you want colours that look natural, as you remember them, you use Portra.

If you want super colours, or modified colours, or blueish or greenish or vivid colours, you use other films.

I use Portra for most things I shoot (in colour). If I need a saturated look I'll move on to ektar.

I've found Portra 400NC to be a film that produces colors very very close to reality. The new Portra 400 has a little more zip (saturation), but it remains very very tasteful. It can sometimes be necessary to increase contrast in post-processing with Portra 400, but that gives you the choice of what part of the enormous dynamic range to compress (throw out).
The "consumer" C-41 films are all un-naturally hot with rather high saturation and contrast. That is the result of a competitive war that Fujifilm started and Kodak responded to. Current "consumer" C-41 films are very different from Kodacolor II, which was rather laid-back stuff.

Full res scans - albeit highly compressed, of Kodak Portra 160 and 400 used in none portrait. At more then 100% view, don't mistake JPEG artifacting for grain. Click on image for original version.

Portra films are highly evolved films that lend themselves to versatlity. Now that Kodak has let go their digital line of camera's, and is focusing back on to film, we should see the continuance of films advancement technologically for our benefit.

I think it's whatever you can get away with. It's not recommended that you shoot people with Kodak Ektar but I did this last weekend while I was hiking with my gf. Just shoot and have fun..

Portra 400 is an excellent all-purpose film. Portra 160 has a too soft contrast for straightforward scanning. Both films render red hues very natural, other than Ektar 100 suffering from a sort of red rampage wreaking havoc even upon slight overexposure.