How to Write Vintage Photo Prompts - Nano Banana 2

1900s: a glass-plate portrait, everything sharp in the centre and soft at the edges, subjects stiff from long exposures, a warm brown tone from the printing chemistry rather than a filter. 1950s: Kodachrome, saturated reds, deep contrast, colours that have held up remarkably well. 1970s: colour negative stock that has since shifted warm and faded, low contrast, a slight orange cast, heavy grain. 1980s: on-camera flash, harsh shadows behind the subject, a slight green cast from fluorescent light.

Those are four completely different images, and each is a few concrete words. Naming the decade also brings clothing, hairstyles, interiors and cars along with it, which does more for period authenticity than any amount of instruction about mood.

Ask for one or two of these, not all of them. Piling on every kind of damage produces something that looks like a heavily filtered digital image rather than an old print, which is the exact failure you were trying to avoid.

Grain is worth its own mention because it is often the thing missing. Film grain is structured and slightly clumpy, quite unlike digital noise, and asking for visible film grain gives the image a texture that clean digital output never has.