Well if we are going to talk 'old school' shall we mention the possibilities for capturing that image on B&W film after carefully spot metering and then adjusting the development time to make the most of the possibilities for shifting the shadow values up to where we want them to be? Every now and then that extra step of developing the negative in the middle of the process with film made so much more possible than many folks realize. And it was perfectly acceptable for focus to be a little soft and for there to be grain in our prints! Would that be considered heresy now?