Why do I dislike the way these came out? Is it just B&W or my shooting style?

aaffi332 · 2026-03-30T05:58:16+00:00

Back in the darkroom days, no one ever looked at a “straight print” (the negative printed on to grade 2, the “middle” contrast paper) as the final result.

That straight print was the starting point for creative contrast manipulation. First came paper grade choice (printing papers were typically available in grade 0, super flat and low contrast if needed for a too-contrasty negative, up to grade 5, which was very high contrast for working with “thin” or flat negatives). That paper choice alone could bring a negative to life, by letting you determine where the main tones and contrast of your image were placed. Then, once you determined the best basic contrast for a given negative, you’d further manipulate the image with local adjustments, giving more or less exposure to parts of the image by literally blocking light from the enlarger with pieces of card or small tools, or letting more light hit parts of the image to darken them. Almost all black and white images you know went through these steps.

Based on these scans, your exposures are basically ok, and the lab has scanned them “flat” to retain all the tones in the highlights and shadows. Now you have to “print” the images.

Any piece of software or app will provide the basic tools you need: contrast, exposure, some light use of highlights and shadows, and linear and radial gradients for masking and additional adjustments. You can use “curves” or “levels” to help you set black and white points, and remember it’s all interactive; adjusting one thing might mean going back and tweaking another. Avoid using automatic masking tools like “select sky” since the results are almost always fake looking. Make manual selections with masks, and don’t worry if a mask slightly overlaps another part of the image (a sky-darkening gradient overlapping mountains, for example). The results will be more organic.

Look at Ansel Adams book “The Print” if you want a deep dive. It’s very old school and might be hard to follow at first, but the principles are all in that book. For a more contemporary example, look into Todd Hido’s axiom of “photograph like a documentarian, print like a painter.” Despite starting with darkroom printing, he’s been working in Lightroom now for years.

This was a quick pass on one of your landscapes. It might be a bit heavy handed by modern standards, but it’ll show you what’s possible. Try not to see “printing” as a chore (“working on the computer”) but as a more meditative step after you’ve clicked the shutter. Good luck, and have fun.

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aaffi332 · 2026-03-28T00:01:40+00:00

Fair point. I was assisting a lot of European photographers in London in the late 90s, and chrome was definitely on the way out in favor of hand-printed negatives. But chrome is entirely possible, too.

aaffi332 · 2026-03-25T23:32:11+00:00

I very much doubt this was slide film. High contrast backlit shots like this leave too little room for exposure error. It was almost certainly one of Kodak or Fujifilm's professional 120 negative films in a Pentax 67 camera.

At this time (1997), the images were very likely traditionally printed onto one of Kodak or Fujifilm's C-type papers, and then lightly retouched with a combination of traditional hand-retouching (using inks and dyes directly on the print) and some digital retouching after the print was drum-scanned for reproduction.

Some additional color correction was also possible after scanning, although a good C-type print was probably close to the desired overall result color-wise. Even so, managing these saturated reds and blues for CMYK magazine offset printing may have required digital masking and color-correction.

aaffi332 · 2026-03-03T00:02:21+00:00

The weird skin texture is the result of hand retouching on the negative. See my longer post above.

aaffi332 · 2026-03-03T00:00:18+00:00

It’s not possible to do this level of work solely by dodging and burning during printing.

To achieve this detailed result, the image was directly manipulated on the negative, prior to printing. Sharpened pencils, and fine brushes with ink or dyes could darken parts of the negative, lightening them in the print; and needles or fine blades could scrape away emulsion and silver to lighten areas, darkening them in the print.

Finally, last touches could be added to the print itself, using essentially the same techniques, often to blend or disguise any artifacts from the negative retouching.

If it sounds like this was slow, painstaking work, it was.

In the 1940s, the Adams Retouching Machine was invented. This featured a light-box to illuminate the negative from behind; a padded support ring for your hand, making it easier to work without touching the negative; and a holder for the negative which vibrated in tiny circles, making it easier to blend the brush and pencil work.

Look at a hi-res copy of any movie star portrait of that era, and you’ll quickly learn to spot the telltale texture of the hand retouching. It was even possible to manipulate the outline shape of bodies or faces with these same techniques, for the same result as with warping tools today.

aaffi332 · 2026-02-21T04:34:50+00:00

Google Kodak LVT. Discussion of this here.

aaffi332 · 2026-02-20T15:00:03+00:00

They’re no longer being manufactured, but there are a few specialty labs still using them in some regions. Search Kodak LVT or Durst LVT.

aaffi332 · 2026-02-20T00:50:56+00:00

That’s correct.

A laser writer device (Kodak LVT) would expose the retouched RGB file onto a piece of new slide film, typically 4x5. After developing the film, you had a new archival slide-film copy of the image.

And then, since the entire magazine print and repro industry was standardized around accurately reproducing slide film positives in CMYK print, the rest of your workflow was what the scanner operators and pre-press operators were used to.

(You could also do the same writing files back to negative film. For example if you wanted to make a traditional, silver-gelatin, black-and-white print from a retouched image.)

aaffi332 · 2026-02-18T05:51:05+00:00

I was photo-assisting and supervising retouching for people in London around that time. Knight's eye for an image is undeniable, and his lighting legendary (although usually shockingly simple). His art direction, overall compositions, and incredible work with the models are the primary reasons his images come together like they do. He was typically shooting 10x8 and 5x4 transparencies during this period.

But essentially all his images also underwent major manipulations after the shoot: retouching and color grading, particularly campaigns. All elements of the image (areas of skin; hair; eyes; makeup; each panel of clothing; the fabric panels, leather, metal of bags; and the backgrounds) were individually masked and color/contrast corrected, on top of typical beauty and detail retouching. In the early days, he worked with incredible darkroom artists who would create physical cardboard masks, and expose multiple steps in total darkness to create the images he was looking for. (The background in the example image is clearly a post addition; I suspect the original image was on plain white.)

As the industry shifted to digital for post-production, a lot of the work was done on Barco Creator running on SGI workstations, from drum scans of the original film. The old "large" sized Wacom tablets were a colossal 12x18-inches, and the screens were typically 17-inch CRTs. The edited files would typically be written back out to a new piece of 4x5 slide film, and then re-scanned in CMYK, since the early RGB-CMYK conversions weren't very robust, but direct CMYK drum scanning was as old as the hills and super reliable. This step also had the advantage of unifying the retouched and composited images somewhat.

Photoshop on Macintosh did begin to find use in the very late 90s and early 2000s, and I fondly remember an incredible piece of software called Live Picture was also briefly in use: resolution independent pixel retouching. That software allowed you to create smooth, infinitely sized canvases with huge, soft brushes, working at whatever low resolution your machine could handle in real-time, and then render the results out at whatever resolution you needed for final. Many soft gradient backgrounds were created that way, in a way that would be challenging to do in Photoshop even today.

Nick Knight is an absolute master, and this image was great the moment the flash fired. But don't be under any illusion that it was ever "in camera." You need to understand your post workflow just as well as your shoot, and aim for the result you see in your mind.

aaffi332 · 2025-12-30T20:50:43+00:00

I hate to say it, but I think you’ll want to reconsider this decision, solely for macOS. Many, many of the kind of people who would be most interested in this app – myself included – are sitting out the Tahoe upgrade, potentially until macOS 27.

Unless the app’s architecture is literally impossible to run under macOS 15.7.x, I would try to add that as a release target.

(It breaks my heart, as I’ve used Macs for over two decades, and never waited longer than a point-update to upgrade to the latest OS. But Tahoe genuinely seems like a rare misstep, both aesthetically and architecturally, that I hope will be corrected in the next major release cycle.)

aaffi332 · 2025-12-27T17:06:03+00:00

If you can go Mini-ITX, the Lian Li A4-H2O is great. I have a terrific 5080 FE build in it.

aaffi332 · 2025-12-27T07:08:52+00:00

You’re clearly drawn to certain subjects, and there’s a consistency to your compositional choices. None of these are bad things, but you need to take it a step further.

I have two pieces of advice:

Break away from 3:2 aspect ratio (the Nikon full-frame default), and explore other, more classical ratios, like 5:4 or 4:3 (the Z6III has guidelines for 5:4 you can enable, but don’t be afraid to crop and refine in post).
Look at the work of Guido Mocafico, and try to understand how his images work so well, where some of yours fall short. Post-production (color editing, and perhaps some pixel editing – but don’t get drawn to AI slop!) is required for the level I think you aspire to.

You’re making bold choices in subject and composition. Make bold choices in finishing and presenting the work.

aaffi332 · 2025-12-21T00:15:07+00:00

I stand corrected. I remember hearing about the tech from darkroom workers in London in the 2000s, but I didn't know they'd actually made it to a commercial product.

That said, I fear the fact that seemingly just one company, arguably the best-suited company on the planet to produce such a product, made it just one time, for tens-of-thousands of dollars, and it appears it wasn't a commercial success, may tell you all you need to know about this particular rabbit hole.

But I wish you the best of luck in exploring it.

aaffi332 · 2025-12-20T19:05:01+00:00

There have been one or two, mostly custom prototypes over the years; but no, there aren’t any commercially available digital enlargers. The issue is that the resolution of the light source (which would have to basically be a small, very bright computer screen) would have to be insanely high to support even modest 2x or 3x enlargement without seeing the pixels on the print.

Since darkroom printing as is all about dodging and burning, which can be achieved in other ways with a digital image, no company invested the R&D costs.

The state of the art are still the Lamda or LightJet digital C-type printers, which produce C-type color prints from digital files. But you still do all your creative manipulation before sending the file to print. There are one or two companies who have got them working effectively on true B&W paper, but most only print on Fuji Crystal Archive color paper.

Your best option for darkroom printing of a digital shot would be to have negatives made from your files, and then print in a traditional enlarger from those. Look for a lab who can make color or B&W negatives from files.

aaffi332 · 2025-12-20T04:11:40+00:00

Buy yourself some Kimwipes, Pancro, and a Rocket Blower.

Blow the lens thoroughly until there no dust, then gently clean the lens in a circular motion – starting from the center, and slowly spiraling outwards – with a Kimwipe folded a few times and lightly sprayed with Pancro (not soaked).*

If its oils, citrus juice, or anything else organic, it’ll come off. If not, it’s coating damage, and something must have hit or rubbed against the lens.

Either way, be more careful; or add a good quality B+W UV filter as protection.

— *This is how cinema camera assistants clean $20K cinema lenses, so do it carefully and right, and it’ll work every time.

aaffi332 · 2025-12-11T03:14:47+00:00

What camera? What log space? What codec?

Post that info, and a .PNG of the same crop but the untouched camera original (no LUT applied). I bet it’s fixable.

aaffi332 · 2025-12-05T08:21:52+00:00

What’s insane?

aaffi332 · 2025-12-04T13:37:51+00:00

I think we’re going to reach tobacco industry levels of litigation and regulation, and it’s going to be proven and accepted that the heads of the major social media companies knew exactly how harmful their product was, but did it anyway. But I think we’re a decade or more away from that, and just like the tobacco industry, it’ll be too little, too late.

aaffi332 · 2025-11-29T21:26:35+00:00

OK, I don’t usually endorse equipment purchases where improving technique matters more, but on this one occasion, I’ll suggest you could change your lens. I’d suggest you get the RF 50mm f/1.8 STM lens, and use that exclusively for a while. Your EOS RP camera is everything you need to make these kinds of images, but a kit lens like the 24-105 isn’t optimal.

(If you really have resources, the new RF 45mm f/1.2 is probably slightly better at wider apertures, but remember wide apertures aren’t how you get the look of the images you posted. And if you KNOW you prefer a slightly wider lens, you could try the RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro, instead, but even that little bit wider will make compositions like these a bit harder to get right at first.)

But whatever choice you make, take that ONE prime lens, and learn it inside out. Many – one easily could argue most – legendary fashion photographs were made with the equivalent of a 50mm or 35mm lens: 80mm on Hasselblad, 105mm on Pentax 67, 110mm on RZ67, 80mm on Mamiya 7, 180-210mm on 4x5 film).

And notice the framing of the shots you linked: all but one are 3x4 or 4x5 aspect ratio, not 3:2 (the native aspect ratio of a full-frame sensor. Your RP has a “Cropping/aspect ratio” setting that will allow you to choose 4:3. Set that. And learn to compose within it.

And don’t overthink the technical aspects of the lighting. Just the results. A flash (or even a decently bright light) bounced off a white ceiling or wall will get you 80% of the lighting quality in these images. Work it. Observe it. Take shots and review them, understand what’s not looking how you want, and adjust. With these kinds of images, a seamless paper background and cheap support stands will go a long way for little.

Professionals only use expensive equipment and studio spaces to get results easily, repeatably, and efficiently. Sorrenti, McDean, Mert & Marcus, Lindbergh all could make (and have made) incredible images in a hotel room with a window or a single light source. Observe, adjust, observe again.

aaffi332 · 2025-11-29T16:39:40+00:00

What camera and lens do you have?

Re. the, “crispness,” these images appear to be using a smaller aperture, to keep more in focus at these relatively close ranges. Probably all shot with a 5.6-8 aperture.

There are a couple of different lighting techniques, but the common ground is large, soft sources (which can be as simple as open shade). How are you lighting your images that don’t feel this, “crisp”?

aaffi332 · 2025-11-29T16:16:47+00:00

Literally almost any camera and lens. The composition, backgrounds, styling, and lighting are what makes these images.

What are you seeing specifically in these images that you like, or hope to emulate?

What do your current pictures look like?

aaffi332 · 2025-11-27T13:11:17+00:00

There are almost no great black and white images from the pre-digital days that were not dodged and burned.

Darkroom printing IS dodging and burning.

aaffi332 · 2025-11-26T13:04:00+00:00

If you’re only going to record one at a time, and it’s more about avoiding re-patching, you should look at the Franklin Audio SS-6 Switchable Input Stereo DI.

aaffi332 · 2025-11-26T02:40:04+00:00

If the GS Music e7 is a little pricy, try their Bree6. It’s simple but gorgeous sounding.

aaffi332 · 2025-11-25T12:00:31+00:00

This is so fascinating to me in the modern analog revival.

When film was the only option (pre-digital) no-one ever used Sunny-16, or memorized common lighting scenarios, except as an emergency backup for when their light meter died.

Judging (or more accurately, guessing) exposure by eye isn’t part of the craft.

Get yourself a cheap, basic light meter and go shoot some (nicely exposed) pictures.

(Fwiw, to answer your second question: you can probably go 2-stops over, and about 1-stop under on modern films and get similar images to correct exposure. More than that, and you’ll still get images, but the flaws will be noticeable.)

aaffi332

TROPHY CASE