Portrait Lenses

Since as a photographer portraits will probably be your bread and butter, this is a question that is asked a lot by photography students, “What lens or lenses are best for portraits?”

As a general rule, we recall people’s feature best from what’s called the 15 feet rule. In the case of facial recognition, when we see a familiar face, our brain is triggered to reconstruct an image of that face and those features as they appear from 15 feet away according to researchers, so,in order to achieve realistic proportions, we need to shoot from around 15 feet from the subject.

Outdoor portrait shot from around 6 feet with my EF 85mm F/1.8

So, what is the optimum portrait lens? Well it depends on how much of a person you are shooting and show much you want showing. If you want the whole person standing, then you would use a 50-70mm lens, if they sit down then a 50-105mm would work great. If you want a tight head and shoulders shot, then you’d want at least a 200-300mm lens since you want to still be around 15 feet away. Ever see a professional model shoot on location? The photographer is usually using a fat lens on a monopod like a 300mm F/2.8 or even a 400mm F/2.8.

Now I am not advocating that the 15 feet rule is set in stone, different photographers will shoot from different distances to get the look they want. I will sometime used a 50mm and get closer to the subject, with the 50mm, the distance is around 5 feet with a full frame body like I use and I also love, as many photographers do, to shoot portraits with my 85mm portrait lens and when using that lens I can stand at around 9 feet from the subject and fill the frame nicely.

Environmental portrait of WWII actor shot from around 15 feet with 70-200mm lens at 200mm

Many photographers these days will just use their 70-200mm F/2.8 for all their portrait work, which is why this particular lens is the most popular and the lens that sells the most by any builder. One thing you do want to remember when shooting portraits is to be mindful of the distance you shoot from as when you get closer you can make the subject’s nose bigger and their ears smaller. Shoot from too far away and you make their face flat.

Also remember your depth of field as generally the idea is portraits is to make the background disappear, you want the background to be blurry and out of focus as your subject is the important part of the image in an portrait.



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