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Portrait Lenses
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Hi all I have been working mostly in landscape photogrpahy since making the move to digital, but I miss taking portraits, so I have decided to invest in maybe a lens or two. At present I have a 70-200mm lens, but was considering purchasing a fixed lens. Does anyone have any recommendations about going with fixed or zoom lens, preferences and reasons why are very welcome. Thank you all in advance. Don’t work too hard tomorrow, Leesa, :wink:
Fixed (or prime) lenses don’t have the huge advantage in image quality they once did. If you have a good quality zoom, you can forego getting a prime for portraits, in my opinion.
You don’t mention what 70-200mm lens you have, but that is a focal length that it’s difficult to find a bad lens in. All of the Canon 70-200 offerings (of which there are no less than 4) are excellent optically. You obviously want a lens that has a large maximum aperture, so the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 offerings would be the obvious choice.
Sigma also make a 70-200 f/2.8 that is excellent, although they don’t offer image stabilization in it, which is definitely worth having in a lens of this focal length.
For Nikon, their 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens is also an excellent lens.
If your lens has a smaller max. aperture, then you should consider getting a dedicated portrait lens. This can be as simple as a 50mm f/1.8-ish lens, which are available for peanuts from most manufacturers and are all of reasonable quality.
If you have a full-frame body you may want to invest in an 80/85mm lens instead.
Hope that helps.
PeterI use a Sigma 50mm prime f/2.8 for most of my portrait work but i would love the Canon 50mm prime f/1.2 but its very expensive :(
Example of Sigma 50mm f/2.8
I have a Nikon 50/1.4 and although it makes great pictures, I found the focal length on DX to be a bit odd. A 35/2 or an 85/1.8 or 1.4 would be a better choice in my opinion. My 105/2 dc is on it’s way… that would be another good choice if you are using a full frame camera.
But as Peter said above, the 70-200’s are always great for portrait… you should buy a short prime or zoom and you are good to go.
Depends on style, I guess. 50mm on 1.6/1.5 crop is 80mm, which is a classic portrait focal length – you have to step back, thus losing the tendency for the nose to erupt from the subject’s face like Mt. St. Helens.
Peter
Hi everyone thank you for your advice tips. I will let you all know what I decide on. Oh the decisions …..
ps: I have a canon 30d camera and the signma 70-200 f/2.8 lens
cheers :wink:
Leesa wrote:
I have a canon 30d camera and the Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 lens
I have that combination as well, and while it’s a great lens, it’s not as sharp as I would like when shooting wide open. It’s also quite a heavy lens and I find that you need to use a monopod to get the most out of it. I’m in two minds about whether to sell mine and get the Canon EF 20-200mm f/2.8 L IS instead or hang on to it and cover the range with some good primes. I already have the Canon EF 135mm f/2.0 lens (nice review here) and this has become my favourite portrait lens (in spite of the 1.6x factor of the 30D). It seems to be sharp right from wide open through to at least f/8.0 (I’ve not used it with a smaller aperture than f/8.0 yet as I tend to shoot portraits with as wide an aperture as I can get away with). The only downside with this lens is that you really nee to be able to get some space between you and your subject to be able to use it.
Another lens I’m considering is the EF 85mm. I’m not sure yet whether the f/1.2L version is worth the extra over the f/1.8 version for my particular needs. the f/1.2L version also focuses slower than the f/1.8 version. But it’s a great focal length for portraits.
The real advantage you’ll get with a prime is a very subtle one. Bokeh (the appearance of out of focus areas) is generally regarded to be better (=softer, more blurry and buttery) with primes as their optical formulations are far simpler than zooms, especially at the classic portrait lengths of 85-105mm, where a prime may only have four or five elements against the 15 or so a modern zoom will have.
Many ancient primes are regarded as classic portrait lenses (Nikkor 85/1.4, the Russian Jupiter 85/2 for example: both easily adaptable to EOS cameras via cheap adaptors), and it’s the bokeh and softness wide open and blur/haze/veiling that is responsible more than just the focal length. Older lenses also tend to concentrate sharpness near the centre of the frame and let it all go to hell at the edges, which is fine for portraits. My personal favourite for portraits is the manual focus Tamron Adaptall-2 SP 90mm f/2.5, as it’s very sharp wide open (unlike the Jupiter), so easy to focus on the eyes, but still has beautiful bokeh.
You should consider the Tokina 100mm f2.8 and the 50-135 f2.8 lenses. The 100mm is also a macro lens but you would need a lot of distance between you and your subject, pin sharp though. If you are based near Malahide you could even drop out and we will let you see them.
50mm is too short for me on a 1.5 crop camera-
unless you’re including a lot of torso.I like to maintain a little distance from the sitter,
and 50mm doesn’t allow this- up close, you’re crowding them-85mm works for me- about a 135mm equivalent-
but even longer can be better- I used to use a 180mm on the OM2.I recently did a series of portraits using a few different lenses,
from 50mm to 200mm,
and the differences in the representation of the features was very pronounced on the shorter lens
when used at headshot distances-All the 50mm shots were rejected in favour of the ones taken with the longer lenses-
by both myself and the sitter-j
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