Echoing the changes made last year to the Professional Portra line of ISO400 films, Kodak will be discontinuing, next month, its Portra 160NC and 160VC films to replace them with a unique product. However, in an interview with BJP, Lars Fiedler, business and product development manager for Kodak's film and capture division, assures photographers that the US-based firm is still committed to the medium.

"This is us continuing to bring new, enhanced and innovative film to the market," he tells BJP. "The new Portra 160 will be replacing the NC and VC films, but if you look at the whole range of colour negative films we're offering, it covers really the film uses on any application I can think of. We've taken NC and VC away, but we're replaced them with an improved product."

Fiedler says that the new film will be "pretty close to the Portra 160NC in terms of colour saturation and contrast, but the key difference is that it has a significantly finer grain, which will ease the work of photographers in today's workflow," he explains. "It's fair to say that probably 90% or more of film users will digitize their images. Scanning is getting more important, and this film [had to answer those needs].

However, Fiedler is quick to add that Portra 160VC users won't be left out. "I would not say that 160VC users will be losing anything with this new film because, quite frankly, whenever we come up with a new film it has significant improvements, otherwise we wouldn't do it," he says. "When we first launched the Portra film in 1998, the work of photographers was very different. They were much more specified in certain applications, and now their workflows and areas of work have changed, that's why we do believe that this new film will be pretty flexible for all applications."

But, he adds, "for people who really are looking for vivid colours and exceptional high colour saturation, we do have the Ektar 100 film. It's at ISO100, but I guess that doesn't make a big difference."

Listen to Lars Fiedler, business and product development manager for Kodak's film and capture division, talk about the new Portra 160 film:

The introduction of the new Portra 160 film will leave only four professional colour negative films - Portra 160, Portra 400, Portra 800 and Ektar 100, which Kodak says, is the consequence of the market becoming fairly niche, "especially if you compare it to the peak years back in 2000 and 2001," Fiedler explains. However, he adds, "we do see a solid base of film users out there still dedicated to film, as well as dual users."

That fact was reinforced, says Kodak, during last year's Photokina trade show in Germany, which saw the relaunch of the Portra 400 film. "We had a very positive response [to the launch]," claims Fiedler. "And, people might think that the film users out there are from the older generation, but in fact, at Photokina and other trade shows like the Salon de la Photo in Paris, we have had quite a lot of young photographers, who were born in the digital world and raised in digital photography, coming up and being very interested in film and getting to know what can be done with film."

And while the film market continues to decline, there's a silverlining, says Fiedler, "for example, in 2010, we had a significant lesser decline in market than we had anticipated. So, we'll continue to support the film users out there, but it's not only up to us, it also depends on the film users. But, as we see things right now, there's a future for film, absolutely."

The new Kodak Professional Portra 160 film will be available in 35mm, 120/220, 4x5 and 8x10 sheet format from March. It will also be sold, via Canham Cameras, in larger formats.

Read more about Kodak's films:

Kodak replaces two professional films with new Portra 400 - 14 September 2010

Kodak: "There is a very real resurgence for film" - 27 September 2010

End of the line for Kodachrome - 16 November 2010

The Last Roll of Kodachrome - 18 January 2011