Vintage Photo Look

[jen_wardale]

For ages I have been trying to find different ways for getting B&W photos (or

even better colour photos) to look old. I can develop B&W film at home, but not

colour, and I'd love to know what process would be best for a retro look? I have

got an old Lubitel 2 TLR and I am very pleased with the results and they do look

fairly retro, but not enough.

 

I wish to replicate the exact look of 1950s/60s photos. There is just a certain

something that i'm missing, has anyone ever tried and been successful in making

a photo look just like its from the 50s/60s? Would semi-stand and Acufine help

greatly and if so has anyone got examples.

 

Thanks, would appreciate some help!<div></div>

[maesphoto]

Hi,

What do you mean by a 50/60 look? The way how people are dressed, haircut etc.. ? like on your sample? or the technical look on bromide paper? I'm old enough to have made lots of pictures during that period.

The only difference I see when I'm scanning an old 50/60 b+w negative from those years, is that scanning now gives me more details, which in the 60ies where difficult to obtain.If it's color, the colors of those years are somewhat more saturated and contain somewhat more black.

Of course if you want to obtain the look of an old photograph looked at after 30 or 40 years, you can obtain a vintage effect by desaturating the picture a little bit.

I'm adding a few examples.<div></div>

[maesphoto]

Here's also a color picture<div></div>

[gaius1]

Use Efke KB50 film in Rodinal.

[ronald_moravec1]

What you show here is simply good processing and good LIGHTING. Film is exposed enough to get detail in the darks and not developed so long as to block the highlights.

 

Tri x film exposed at EI 200 and developed in D76 for 6.5 min at 1:1 will get this for me. Don`t use T grain films.

 

It is a little easier if I use older Leica lenses rather than the newer ones. I will also say a large neg makes the image better. But the real key is my exotic film and developer! On camera flash does not work. Photography is all about good lighting and quality processing.

[chris_waller]

Try Ilford FP4 rated at 50 ASA and reduce development by about 45 percent from the 125 ASA time. I rate FP4 at 50 ASA and dev in Rodinal 1:50, 20 C, 9 minutes. This gives me that kind of tonality.

[mfophotos]

Looking at the guys in the background, the best way to have a 1960s look is to make sure people are carrying around Nikon Fs.

[pico_digoliardi]

Keep in mind that much of the impression you get of 50's/60's photography comes from publication reproduction technology of the same era, and it was quite different then, especially color.

 

Semi-stand, Acufine? Are you trying to make MF and LF looks from miniature negatives?

 

Most of the B&W PR photographs distributed by the bale-full back then were copies of originals mass-prodeuced via contact-printing and generally of tones selected that would reproduce adequately in newspapers and magazines, or in a word, crappy.

[pico_digoliardi]

For the digital folks I'm sure there's a Mr. Peabody Way-Back Machine plugin somewhere. "Where are we going Mr. Peabody?" Dial in an era, and there ya go. It's gonna happen.

[peter_popp1]

Not really sure if this is what you're looking for, but here is a Sunday Morning

Photographer article by Mike Johnston on Luminous Landscape about achieving what he

calls "The Glow". It might help.

 

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-02-04-28.shtml

[michael_gilday]

This is something I've been working at for several years now, and have been meaning to create a webpage about.<br><br>

 

I think, at the most basic, you have to separate the "vintage photo look" into two halves - the technical part, that "behind" the lens, if you will, and the aesthetic part, that in front of the lens.<br><br>

 

Film choice and, to a limited extent, developing, has a huge part to play in getting the "look". Tri-X in a 1930's TLR or folder looks so very, very different than TMY or Delta 400 in the same camera, just as Efke/Adox 100 in a 1960's 35mm rangefinder has a very different look than TMX. In color, try portrait films, printed by a "pro" or portrait lab - modern print films are rather contrastier than their predecessors, and most minilabs seem to bump up the contrast (and sometimes saturation) a bit, as that's what they perceive people want. I sorely miss Agfa's old Portrait 160 film, which had enormously flat contrast and low saturation, even for a portrait film.<br><br>

 

<A href="http://frank.redpin.com/~urbex/oldphotoproject/harriet.jpg">

1930's 6x6cm Zeiss Nettar, Tri-X, no filter</a><br><br>

 

<a href="http://frank.redpin.com/~urbex/oldphotoproject/MOA.jpg">

same camera, TMax 100, no filter</a><br><br>

 

A little overexposure can help - I have a 1950's Kodak pocket guide whose helpful instructions pretty explicitly imply a "Sunny f/11 rule". Sometimes, even a *lot* of overexposure can help you get the look you're going for. If you're using flash, you want a big 'un, with a lot of light output, used at full power. You couldn't dial a Press 5, M2, or M3 bulb down to 1/8th power back in the day; you just had to stop down as best you could and let loose with a whole lot of light.<br><br>

 

As far as the aesthetic end, stuff in front of the camera, a lot of it depends on what you're shooting... but it often comes down to subject and pose. Back before the point-and-shoot revolution, most snapshots were at least a little bit posed, as opposed to truly candid; if Mom didn't hustle everyone outside into the front yard so she could take their photo with the sun at her back, they at least knew they were being photographed. Budding photographers were generally reminded to make pictures that told stories, and it wasn't terribly bad advice. "Here's Jo, reading a magazine" has a chance of being a more interesting photo than "Here's Jo, sitting on a chair". "Here's Bob, with a rake, getting ready to weed his garden" is probably more interesting than "Here's Bob, standing in his garden".<br><br>

 

When all else fails, try for timeless clothing and hairstyles that aren't easily dated, and unobtrusive backgrounds; it's hard to make a vintage-looking photo of someone wearing, oh, a Dixie Chicks t-shirt, while talking on a tiny little cellphone and leaning on a wide-screen flat-panel television. :)

 

<a href="http://frank.redpin.com/~urbex/oldphotoproject/Mike.jpg">Zorki-4, 50/2 Jupiter-8, Efke 100, no filter</a><br><br>

 

<a href="http://frank.redpin.com/~urbex/oldphotoproject/Ashtonsquare.jpg">

Canon A-1, Vivitar 135/2.8, Ilford HP5, no filter</a>, one old Speedlight on-camera and a Vivitar 283 on a bracket; cropped to a square for purely aesthetic reasons<br><br>

 

<i>(all the photos are scans of proofs on a very old, very cheap flatbed... sorry.)</i>

[josepmiro]

I don't think there's a look of the 60's. At that time, there were, as nowadays, many combinations of cameras, lenses, developers and films and there were also a lot of photographers with different tastes about composition, light, etc.

[rezdm]

My 5 cents here...

 

IOnce I visited a wet-process seminar, and a lecturer was asked 'how to'.

 

First of all, may be try to use old thick films (Forte, Efke).

Print on old-style papers (baryt -- that's obvious, better exactly old papers)

If you have bought such a paper, just put it for at least for a year(!) to some warm(!) place.

You can also tone the print using just tea -- just add some fresh strong tea into fixing bath.

 

That's it!

[collect888]

Shoot Polaroid Instant Film.

[don_mckeith]

I've only got $0.02 worth---but here it is--

 

 

for the 50's-60's look,you need to use a 50's-60 lens(single coated).

 

I'll probably get mugged for this,but most of the advancements in "sharpness" since then has actually been in contrast,not in actual sharpness----imo, modern lenses are way too contrasty for the "vintage look".

[jen_wardale]

Thanks for all the responses, very helpful. I will certainly try some of the techniques you've suggested and see how that looks.

 

I will defintely try Efke next because I have seen alot of good retro -look photos using it.

 

I'll have to show the results if it works.

[johndc]

I agree with Ronald that if there is a "look" of the 60's, it has more to do with lighting than it does with any particular film or developer. Lighting for film and TV, like painting, has gone through various "conventions" through the years, from the heavy backlighting of the Hollywood "Golden Age" to the "softbox" approach of recent years. The shot of the Beatles above used a lighting style very common in the 60's, though not so common today, which makes the image even more striking.

 

Try to find out what sort of lighting conventions existed in the 60's and you'll get alot closer to your goal of creating photos with that "swinging" look.

 

On a side note, I also agree with the statement about using single-coated lenses, though I don't think that would have as much of an impact as the lighting.

[al_kaplan1]

If you can find an old UNcoated lens you'll get a still older look. Try to pick up an old Rollieflex with an uncoated Tessar. Another thing about photos from about 1950 and before was the use of orthochromatic film, which wasn't sensitive to red light. You can geta similar effect now by shooting through a blue filter like an 80B.

[elgordo]

This isn't quite the type of "vintage" you were looking for... but I just got into film and needed a sacrificial roll as my first development... so I did a roll of ISO 400 C41 from a disposable Konica camera I had laying around in D76 chemicals, no stop bath, developed about a 1 degree C too high on purpose because of opacity issues I was reading about, and got the image below as one example. No stop bath, just water wash, fixed for ~10 minutes, then mishandled the negatives constantly for a week before scanning on a Nikon 4000. Certainly not the same vintage you're talking about but it definitely looks like its been around forever. :-)

 

<a href="http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l280/ElGordo_03/New/nikonscan2_small2.jpg">The result.</a>

[cschweda]

One way to get the vintage look automatically is to use vintage cameras, tri-x, and something like Acufine.

 

Find a Russian Leica clone (like a Fed 3) and a Juipter lens. (You've got a Lubitel, so maybe all you need is some good luck with Tri-x and Acufine.)

 

Anyway, sometimes you get lucky (and, yes, sometimes you just get a crappy lens) but I've been pleased with the Jupiter lenses for when I want that distinct, contrasty (and surprisingly sharp) "vintage" look.

 

I develop the Tri-X in Acufine.

 

Check around on the web for reputable dealer that sell the Russian cameras (I can vouch for Fedka) and you'll find that you can usually acquire a decent Fed or Kiev for around $90 and then another $50-$100 for the lenses. You can find the cameras cheaper, too -- but obviously this is an area where your YMMV.

[christopher_nisperos2]

The Beatles shot looks "50s" or "60s" because of the the

television studio lighting, correct exposure and development and

a fairly contrasty lens.

 

For the retro-look portrait I did for the Schneider website, I had to

substantially overexpose to obtain the look I was trying to get the

look I wanted. The result closely matched an actual magazine I

used as a model.

 

http://

www.schneiderkreuznach.com/on_location_with.htm#nisperos

 

Best,

 

Christopher

 

PS - it helps if the subject, setting, costume, hairstyle, decor, etc.

are in the same period, too!

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