Tokyo 1 - Kodak Portra 400

April 8th, 2025 - 28 rolls in 18 days across Japan with Leica M7 and Mamiya 7ii. Portra, CineStill, Marix. Jetlagged start, few night shots. Tokyo1 begins—more to come.

I'm starting a series of posts featuring the best film photos I took in Japan. I brought two rolls of Portra, along with several rolls of CineStill 400D and 800T. I also bought film while there, concerned about potential x-ray damage at the airport, which fortunately didn’t happen.

Among the films I picked up were more CineStill 400D and some from Marix, a Japanese brand that also respooled Kodak Vision stock. I believe those will start appearing after the Tokyo7 batch or so.

The Numbers

The trip lasted 18 days. In total, I shot 28 rolls, or an average of 1.5 rolls (56 photos) per day.

All the film canisters traveled with me in a Ziploc bag through two international and two domestic flights, five hotels, six cities, a rental car, and the 🚅 Shinkansen (Japan’s bullet train).

During the trip, I bought a Mamiya 7ii, medium format camera, and shot 3 rolls of film on it, which will come at the very end of the series.

All the 35mm photos were taken with a Leica M7 and a Nokton 35mm f/1.5 lens.

Welcome to Tokyo 1

During this first day, things were just warming up. After dev&scanning it, I am happy that I just brought two rolls of Portra, because I think the other film stocks has more character and performed better, especially the CineStills.

This roll has some city and subway shots, my family and I were extremely jetlagged, which means just a few night shots.

This one was on the next day, actually.

We are just warmin up, there’s lots of good stuff ahead!