Kodak Portra 160 - 35mm Colour Negative Film
The quietest film in the Portra family. Also the finest.
Portra 400 gets the attention. Portra 160 gets the results, when the light cooperates.
Kodak Portra 160 35mm Film is an ISO 160 daylight-balanced professional colour negative film and the finest-grained option in the Portra lineup. Built on Kodak's T-GRAIN emulsion with VISION Film cinematic technology, it produces images with very fine grain, low contrast, medium colour saturation, and the natural skin tones that made the Portra name the professional standard for portrait and wedding work. It handles overexposure generously, holding highlight detail where other films give up. DX coded, 36 exposures, standard C-41 chemistry. Sold in unboxed individual canisters.
What Makes Kodak Portra 160 35mm Film Habit-Forming
The Finest Grain in the Portra Family Portra 160 delivers smoother, more natural skin tones than its faster siblings and enlarges beautifully. The T-GRAIN emulsion produces negatives with a clarity that Portra 400, for all its versatility, cannot quite match at the grain level. For work destined for large prints, 160 is where the family performs at its technical best.
Natural, Accurate Colour Warm, believable skin tones, medium contrast, low saturation. Colours are subtle rather than bold, which makes Portra 160 a sensible choice for portraits, weddings, lifestyle work and landscapes where smooth colour transitions matter. It renders the world as you remember it rather than as you wished it looked.
Exceptional Exposure Latitude Portra 160 handles overexposure generously, with highlight roll-off that is gradual rather than abrupt. Shooting at ISO 100 rather than box speed gives more shadow detail, and it is a widely recommended approach among experienced Portra shooters.
Portrait and Wedding Photography's Quiet Standard Portra 160 is at its best photographing people or food where you want a subtle, high-end look without the film drawing attention to itself. Commercial and wedding photographers who need consistent, faithful results in controlled or good natural light have relied on it for years. It doesn't shout. It gets the image right.
Built for Scanning The T-GRAIN micro-structure was optimised for scanning. Negatives are clean and well behaved on flatbed and dedicated film scanners, with colour information that translates predictably through standard inversion workflows.
ISO 160: Give It Good Light Slower than Portra 400 and more demanding about light. In good daylight or studio conditions it is exceptional. In low or mixed light it asks for more care than its faster sibling. That trade-off is exactly what produces the finest grain in the family.
DX Coded, 36 Exposures Compatible with any 35mm camera including fully automatic models.
Best For Portrait, wedding, commercial, fashion and fine art colour photography in good natural or controlled light. The grain quality, skin tone rendering and exposure latitude make it the most technically refined option in the Portra family for daylight work, and the results at large print sizes are difficult to match in 35mm. It is not the film for unpredictable light or fast-moving available-light situations. For those, Portra 400 is waiting.
Once you've shot it, send it our way. We develop, scan and print it too, and a Portra 160 portrait on 6x8 lustre is the argument for the whole format.
Portra 160 is the film that makes photographers who discover it wonder why they didn't load it sooner. The fine grain, the accurate colour, the skin tones: these are the qualities of a film built for photographers who need to get it right. In good light it is, quietly, one of the finest colour films available.