What are good Portrait lens
- Thread starter mark35
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Soldato
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- 5 Nov 2004
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Certainly will! Great portrait lens.mark35 said:
Soldato
Get the 50mm anyway. Its a great lens for a great price.
Soldato
Remember, its the level of barrel distortion / pincushioning that makes 75-105mm a good focal length range for portraits. This ensures that facial features look normal. Therefore the 1.5x crop factor is irrelevant in this respect.
I can't make any comment about the particular lens but remember getting too close your subject results in a perspective that exaggerates noses and other body parts. Also, staying out of their personal space is can also be a factor, an uncomfortable subject will not likely photograph well.
Conventional teaching is that the 85-135mm focal length range is ideal for portrait photography (field of view crop factor included).
Amongst the Minolta crowd, for a long time prior to digital, the favoured portrait lens was the 85mm 1.4; which is an awesome lens and even now with the extended length due to the crop factor, people still favour it.
I would say that your 70-200L would actually be fine for portrait work especially as you can use DoF to blur the background as it is a nice fast lens.
Conventional teaching is that the 85-135mm focal length range is ideal for portrait photography (field of view crop factor included).
Amongst the Minolta crowd, for a long time prior to digital, the favoured portrait lens was the 85mm 1.4; which is an awesome lens and even now with the extended length due to the crop factor, people still favour it.
I would say that your 70-200L would actually be fine for portrait work especially as you can use DoF to blur the background as it is a nice fast lens.
Soldato
The 50mm @ f:1.8 does let you take more indoor portraits without flash , if you are happy to loose DOF 
Soldato
SDK^ said:The Canon 85mm L 1.2 is probably the best lens available
It is! Could not agree more. If you cant afford it though, the F1.8 version is also damn good.
A short article about the best Canon lenses for portraiture:
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Canon-Portrait-Lens.aspx
The website also has reviews of most (all?) Canon lenses and some accessories
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Canon-Portrait-Lens.aspx
The website also has reviews of most (all?) Canon lenses and some accessories
Associate
Actually, barrel / pincushion distortion is purely dependent on lens design and not a function of focal length. Depending on the quality of the lens, you will see different amounts of barrel / pincushion distortion with the same focal length.Joe T said:
Perspective distortion is the one that is dependent on focal length, as a result of having to squeeze in such a wide angle of view into the frame.
Sleepyd said:
You aren't always looking for sharpness in a portrait lens; generally you are looking for a lens which flatters, not one which shows every line and defect. Of course, it does depend what type of portrait you are intending to take but generally people don't want to be faced with reality.
Perhaps before running out to fill your gadget bag with lenses (guilty of this myself), try the existing lens that you've got.
Canon's EF 85mm f1.8 would be my choice of affordable portrait lens, it's of a good focal length and is fast to throw the bg out of focus. Good and sharp, light and quick to focus.
I have the 50 1.8 but generally use my 135mm prime for portraiture over is as the 135 allows you to get further away, and has less pincushion distortion, so you don't end up with all your portraits looking like those pictures of dogs noses taken with a 14mm fisheye!
An f/4 lens really isn't that fast, and so the DoF at 70mm will still be quite deep, the 70-200 is also considerably larger and heavier than the 85mm prime which may be a factor in your decision.
Col
I have the 50 1.8 but generally use my 135mm prime for portraiture over is as the 135 allows you to get further away, and has less pincushion distortion, so you don't end up with all your portraits looking like those pictures of dogs noses taken with a 14mm fisheye!
An f/4 lens really isn't that fast, and so the DoF at 70mm will still be quite deep, the 70-200 is also considerably larger and heavier than the 85mm prime which may be a factor in your decision.
Col
Associate
Couldn't agree more.
I use the 85mm f1.8, the 50mm f1.4 and as of Friday have just replaced my 28-135mm f4.5-5.6 IS with a 24-105mm f4L IS.
I was looking at the 70-200mm L but after seeing the size of it and it being double the price of the 24-105mm L I decided to get the latter.
It depends on how you prefer to shoot your portraits. Whilst I do a fair bit of tripod work I also seem to be favoring freehand at the moment and tring to do that with the 70-200mm L I would think would be pretty tiring pretty fast.
I am hooking them up to a 5D so don't get the crop factor but the 105mm end of the L lens enables me to get in close enough whilst still maintaining a reasonable distance in a reasonably sized space.
I also shoot for fun and not for a profession and so my views should be taken along with that fact in mind.
RB
I use the 85mm f1.8, the 50mm f1.4 and as of Friday have just replaced my 28-135mm f4.5-5.6 IS with a 24-105mm f4L IS.
I was looking at the 70-200mm L but after seeing the size of it and it being double the price of the 24-105mm L I decided to get the latter.
It depends on how you prefer to shoot your portraits. Whilst I do a fair bit of tripod work I also seem to be favoring freehand at the moment and tring to do that with the 70-200mm L I would think would be pretty tiring pretty fast.
I am hooking them up to a 5D so don't get the crop factor but the 105mm end of the L lens enables me to get in close enough whilst still maintaining a reasonable distance in a reasonably sized space.
I also shoot for fun and not for a profession and so my views should be taken along with that fact in mind.
RB