I love the look of Portra 400. It's my go to for film and I use a Portra 400 recipe with my Fuji as well as edit RAW with RNI and JC Porta 400. All of those look simular but the Portra for the Sony is nowhere near what I get with Portra. It's a bit too warm and saturated.
thoughts?
Let me start by thanking you for your feedback! The voice of the community is very valuable to me and I take time to read and consider each perspective in order to improve the experience and the products. Users can always propose and ask for a modification for the recipes if they feel it can be improved.
But I would like to say I feel a little bit confused by your comparison, as I am not sure it's accurate to start from. Let me explain why.
Kodak portra 400 is predominantely characterized by green & golden tones and overall has quite warm colors.
I checked fujixweekly's recipe as a reference to see what they've done with their recipe, and they also pushed it on the warm side with tint of green in it, so I am confused why you are saying this recipe is too warm.
It's always useful to post some of your film images for accurate references to compare to. That way we can easily identify the main differences and what can be improved to the recipe.
Here are 2 nice galleries as a reference.
https://tahusa.co/analog-film-review/kodak-portra-400/
https://thedarkroom.com/film/portra-400/photo-gallery/
Notice how colors are saturated and on the warm side, blues going slightly towards magenta in some ocassions, skintones shifting towards orange -amber in most scenarios, and greens usually being lush teal.
There are also images that come out cold like this
but these are few, I have no idea in what lighting conditions these have been shot in,
and are not representative to the most common portra 400 look.
In most situations colors come out quite saturated, less saturated than the film simulation but more saturated than the preset you have presented as comparison.
The greens are teal, skintones quite amber or golden, with skies or blues going ever so slightly towards magenta and in some ocassions highly saturated, although some images are not as saturated, so it probably come down to multiple factors like lens, developing and scanning. While the image you presented is quite the opposite in terms of colors. Colors in the image you presented are quite desaturated, greens turning olive, warmer tones like yellow and orange shifting towards pink, and skies towards teal.
The saturation is turned up high on the film simulation, that is true, because from past experiences with the community sending me their work, I've noticed each sony camera has a different saturation point to start from. Some more saturated, other models less desaturated. So to make sure people are getting nice images, I boosted the saturation on most film simulations, just in case. That can be easily toned down in the picture profile menu on your own preference.
Can you add a couple portra 400 samples from your archive, since you personally shot portra 400? Add 5-10 images from your past scanns, that way we can see the main characteristics and color shifting in the skies, skin tones, leaves and so on. Afterwards we can compare the film simulation and identify the main differences, and how this recipe can be improved. thanks!
Also just as a note, it's not fair to compare film simulations to raw presets, because in camera we have less adjutments tools to work with, for example HSL tools, and we can only bring the image so close to the real film stock. With raw presets you have all the flexibility needed to achieve a certain look.