what are the techniques required to recreate the style of some of these older headshot style of photographs? i know the pose setup is obvious, and using lower ISO b/w film, but is there any lighting setup that would be obvious from seeing these?

i also feel like they went crazy with the smoothing and darkroom trickery for some of these. but someone give me a qrd on how to recreate this type of shot pl0xors

>>4426795
These used those awful lenses that take bright purple photos wide open, but on black and white film, usually with two strobes and two umbrellas for main and fill because softboxes were for rich people

>>4426795
Portrait lenses in general tend to have soft focus, that's probably what you're seeing here
Also, they used the garishly bright photo lighting you're seeing there because the films available at the time were a lot less sensitive
Also love the contrast here between recessive chin lady and gorilla jaw guy, 4chins is the best website

maybe orthochromatic film
soft focus filter

>>4426795

Fill light looks 1 stop under the key light for bright shadows.

Lens sonewhere in 50-135mm
2 lights on model 1 on bg,
Black and white film.

Also the highlights are quite bright so likely middle grey is set to the shadows or his suit jacket.
This works because there is nothing bright in the bg so they can let the skin go to almost blown white at its brightest.

And yes heavy retouch on the skin.

>>4426792 (OP)
Large format. 4x5 sheets. And 180mm lenses.

The unique rendering of large film sheets and long focal lengths cannot be recreated with a digital fullframe camera.

>>4427544
You went too old school, OP's pic can be done with a full frame

>>4427544
The grain is way too prominent for large format. My bet is that it's some slow contrasty ortho film in 135.

Gonna dump some stuff from my graflex book
Dunno if it helps

>>4426792 (OP)
Yes I have a question as well. Why does every fucking post from GenA ask for an easy cheat sheet on how to make their crappy digishit photos look like X, Y or Z old ass film photos and expect everyone to just hand them ready-made instructions so they never have to experiment or learn anything themselves? Every fucking day, “How do I achieve this aesthetic? Someone tell me what to do.” Here’s what you do, get your ass a camera and start learning, just like everyone has had to, and discover your own fucking style instead of spending 20x the time & effort to make a bad approximation of someone else’s.

>>4428404
Learned helplessness of a screen addicted generation. I thank god I had time as a child without the internet being in my home.

>>4426792 (OP)
This is seriously lighting 101 results that can be learned in an afternoon during your first day on a Sears portraiture job after the morning orientation spent 2 hours corporate brainwashing you and telling you not to sexually harass people.
These posts >>4428388 are a cheatsheet but I'll do you one better: look up the strobist lessons. They're not even that in depth but practice them and you'll start to develop an intuitive sense of lighting.
Then watch Best of Dean Collins on Lighting for another approach, that defined a lot of the 90s commercial photography look as it was widely copied, but will be great practice that can be applied to modern looks, too.
Then read Roberto Valenzuela's books Picture Perfect Lighting and Picture Perfect Flash.
At some point along all of this, read Studio Anywhere by Nick Fancher, to learn how to do all of this minimally and affordably and spur creativity.
Do all of these, and I guarantee you'll be better than 99.9% of photographers, if not 99.99%, when it comes to lighting. You'll be able to recreate any retro look you want, be a master of modern lighting, and you'll be able to create original, effective lighting as well.

>>4428418
PS: don't just read. Apply what you read and practice a lot. If your friends don't sigh when they see you, anticipating being roped into another practice session, you're doing it wrong.

>>4428404
>>4428418
sorry for reinforcing bad behavior lol