To quote Kodak Alaris "Kodak Professional Portra 800 Film delivers well balanced color saturation, very fine grain, and best-in-class underexposure latitude. This film is ideal for long lenses and low light situations". Myself, I use its versatility and characteristics for quite a different application...

I find it highly effective for harsh daylight photography where it provides exceptional performance in very bright conditions, providing vibrant images without over-saturation. Its wide dynamic range handles scenes with large differences between highlights and shadows most efficaciously.

The photos hare were all made on said Portra 800 with an AF 35mm f2 lens on a bright, contrasty, sunny day over a couple of hours around midday one hot summer. Scenes exhibiting high contrast and extreme dynamic range enough to challenge any photographic medium.

Portra eats it all up from the deepest shadows to the brightest highlights without cutoffs, without excessive granularity (noise if you like) in the shadows, without colour shifts (over saturation etc.) and with loads of detail.

I love the colours you get from this film with its well balanced colour saturation plus its very fine grain for its speed. The grain it does exhibit helps give my photos depth and make them pop.

The combination of speed, latitude, and character makes this film standout in the colour negative world.

I love this film, it is my absolute favourite but it has one major downside, cost. It is very expensive. At £21 for a 36 exposure roll you need to be serious about every single frame you take with it. It is not a film to go out and about and experiment with, well at least not too often after you have calibrated it. However it is a beautiful and highly flexible emulsion and I have it loaded in my camera more often than not for deliberate, considered work.