The new Kodak Professional Portra 400 film has been designed for scanning and enlargements uses and offers "beautiful, natural skin tones and superb colour reproduction," claims Kodak. The film, which will be available from November, will replace the existing Kodak Professional Portra 400NC and 400VC films - both of which will be discontinued at the end of the year.

However, while the Portra 400NC and 400VC were also available in 8x10 sheet format, the new film will only be available in 35 mm, 120/220, and 4x5 sheet format.

"This new Portra film follows a Kodak tradition of looking across our multiple business lines and leveraging our innovative technologies to make even industry-leading products better," says Lars Fiedler, business and product development manager for Film Capture at Kodak Europe. "The new film is perfect for scanning and enlargements, two key components of today’s photographic workflow. At the same time, we’ve preserved the attributes that photographers have come to expect, like the unmatched skin tone reproduction of our Portra family of films."

The new Portra 400 film uses Kodak's Vision film technology as well as Antenna Dye Sensitisation in the cyan and magenta emulsion layers to achieve its fine grain, says Kodak. "It is an ideal choice for portrait and fashion photography, as well as nature, travel and outdoor photography, where the action is fast or the lighting can’t be controlled."

BJP will be meeting with Kodak's film division next week at the Photokina trade show in Germany - send us our questions to bjp.news@bjphoto.co.uk.

For more information, visit www.kodak.com/go/professional.