Lenses for Portraiture

The same principle that was outlined for cameras applies to lenses. Any lens, in the hands of a competent operator will produce a good portrait. Traditionalists will quote a hundred textbooks and articles that state that the 'standard' portrait lens with a 35mm camera should have a focal length of 135mm. While this claim may be true, the results will tend to give you certain sameness in the finished appearance (cropped head and shoulders, flattened perspective, out-of-focus background). The problem here lies in that if you took every portrait all your life with this 'portrait' lens and so did every other photographer, life would be pretty boring!

One of the ironies of modern lens design is that at the top of the range lenses are critically (and sometimes cruelly!) sharp. They show every skin pore, facial hair and blemish. It may be necessary to fit a $30 soft focus filter on a $1200 portrait lens to achieve an acceptable result.

Wide-angle lenses are great for getting close to the action in candid portrait photography. You work close to your subject material. You feel their presence. Often you can capture wonderful subject movement in the shot. Wide-angle lenses are also extremely useful when doing group portraits, particularly inside rooms. Wide-angle lenses are also ideal for shooting environmental portraits, where the subject is a small part of their surroundings eg an artist in their studio or a farmer in the milking shed. Wide-angle lenses have their downside for portraiture. In group shots, the (unlucky) person who gets to sit on the edge of the picture will have a distorted face. This disadvantage is even more evident with close-up individual shots where facial features may be grossly distorted. Faces can almost become caricatures of the people. Of course, in certain situations, this distortion can be turned into a feature.

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Telephoto lenses for portraiture have several major advantages. They allow you to shoot at a distance and as a result in candid travel portrait work they enable you to shoot without encroaching on the subject's personal space. A telephoto lens will flatten perspective and as a result usually 'flatters' the subject. Telephotos also enable you to get larger image sizes, which are an asset. The downside of telephotos is that there is a greater risk of camera shake and they are more cumbersome to carry around. However, the main problem is that you may not be able to get physically close enough to your subject to communicate with them (or they with you). And certainly, your ability to create warmth and rapport will be limited.

The Ideal portrait lens is very much a matter of personal choice. Fortunately, these days, there is a wide range of zoom lenses available and these are ideal for portraiture. A zoom lens with a range from say 28mm to 80mm or 35mm to 70mm is one that I would prefer. This zoom enables you to do wide-angle environmental portraits and group shots and at the other end of the scale, the 70 or 80 mm enables you to do individual head and shoulders and couple shots. At the same time I believe the standard 50mm lens is a fantastic lens to use, especially if it is 'fast' i.e. f1.4 or f1.8 with sharp optics.

If you haven't got a zoom lens, don't despair. Feet were around a long time before zoom lenses and moving the photographer/camera position further from and closer to the subject provides vitality to the shoot. And don't forget the subject can move as well!