Portrait Photography Lens

If you want to flatter your subject, That means you will want to stand at 10 or 15 feet away from her so that her nose isn't significantly closer to you than the rest of her face. However, at such a large distance from the camera, filling the frame with just your subject's face will require a high magnification (i.e., telephoto) lens. Typical "portrait" lenses are therefore between 90 and 135 millimeters long for digital (and 35mm cameras). Many professional fashion photographers use 300mm or 600mm lenses, a little heavy maybe.

With a Canon or Nikon, most professionals end up using their 70-200/2.8 or 80-200/2.8 zooms as portrait lenses. These 3 lb. monsters aren't very pleasant to handhold, though, and if you know that you're only going to do portraits, you're better off with a prime lens. Prime lenses are lighter and give better image quality. Unfortunately, the prime lens in this range that a serious photographer is most likely to own is the 100 or 105 macro. These are very high quality optically but difficult to focus precisely since
most of the focusing precision is reserved for the macro range. Here are some great portrait lenses:

* Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, or, if you're on a budget,
* Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM,
* Canon EF 100mm f/2 USM,
* Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM,
* Nikon 85mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor, or Nikon 85mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor,
* Nikon 105mm f/2.0D AF DC-Nikkor,
* Nikon 135mm f/2.0D AF DC-Nikkor,

What if you're using a small-sensor digital SLR, such as any of the Nikons or the Canon Digital Rebel? In that case, an inexpensive 50/1.8 will function as a very usable portrait lens, roughly equivalent to the 85/1.8 short portrait lenses that are popular on full-frame cameras. Note that the background will not be as blurred as it would be with the longer lens.

* Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, or, if you're feeling rich, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM,
* Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor,

There are folks who argue that a portrait should not be clinically sharp. For them, fuzz = glow and is flattering. Fuzz fans definitely don't like using standard 100mm macro lenses for portraiture. They'll start with a lower performance lens and add fuzziness with a filter (e.g., Zeiss Softar or Tiffen SoftFX), a stocking stretched over the lens, or digital post-processing.

Soft Portrait

Connoisseurs of soft focus insist that you must have a lens with uncorrected spherical aberration. You can get spherical aberration either by using a very old camera/lens or by buying a purpose-built modern soft focus lens. The lens starts as a modern prime telephoto lens, lighter than a zoom, high in contrast, and reasonably high quality, especially stopped down to f/5.6 or smaller.

What is different about this lens is that, with the twist of a ring, you can vary the softness from none to rather soft. Canon has not updated this lens with an ultrasonic motor, which would allow simultaneous manual and auto focus. If you're only going to own one prime telephoto lens, the 100/2 USM or 135/2L USM are probably better choices.
 
 
As far as doing soft focus in other formats, Rodenstock makes an Imagon lens for 4x5 view cameras. This unusual lens has perforated disks that you slide into the middle of the lens. Unfortunately, different softness and aperture settings affect the focus, which requires focussing with the lens stopped down. In medium format, people like the old Zeiss 150 lens for Hasselblad because it simply isn't all that sharp.

Check out some popular  Lens & Camera manufacturers

Sigma Lenses                 Canon Cameras                 Nikon Cameras              Olympus Cameras

Tamron Lenses               Praktica Cameras              Sony Cameras      

 

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