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Tony and Chelsea choose their favorite lenses for portraits, different price points for each, and the benefits of each lens.
3 best PROFESIONAL portrait lenses
Camera Gear, Reviews & Buying Intent
Best Portrait Lens? | Ask David Bergman
Today’s question from Abhinav M., “Hi David. I’m thinking about doing some portraiture and need lens advice. Which will give a better result? An 85mm with a large 1.4 aperture, or a 70-200 at 2.8 […]
Camera Gear, Reviews & Buying Intent
The BEST Cameras & Lenses for PORTRAITS on a budget
Get the best prices with a warranty at + 5% coupon TNC24 Get 5% BONUS for selling gear to KEH with coupon TNC24-SELL You don’t need the most expensive gear to get great portraits! Tony […]
Where I come from … I went out shopping for a Canon A1, because it had this thing called “program automatic.” That was pretty new back then. Then, at the shop, looking for what lens(es) to get with it, I stumbled across this thing with an “aspheric lens” – “What is that?” Well, the woman at Foto Koch in Düsseldorf said she would only get it out of the glass safe if I was serious about it. No need to worry. One look through it and I was sold, even at the then rather stiff price of DM 1100. That was in 1979 – it is still my all time favourite lens. (Of course I use all kinds of other lenses for all kinds of other pictures.) I shudder when I see what they charge for its descendants …
Now, ever since I retired my T90 (an A1 with all the bugs removed and a few nice featured added – such as the multi spot metering, Ansel Adam’s Zone System rolled into one piece of hardware,) the f1.2 90mm AL is out to pasture, occasionally doing duty on an M43 body as a f1.2 170mm lookalike – not all bad, but … On that body, my f1.2 50mm L now has to do the job of the portrait lens at effective 100mm.
For portraits I like using the mild telephoto range. The pictures I take using long telephotos or normal to wide and extreme wide focal lengths – well, I didn’t think of them as portraits. That may be a mistake.
When you mentioned that the “younger generation” leans towards more wide angle portraits, it immediately translated itself in my mind to “they use what they are given by the cell phone industry and they now see things primarily from that perspective. In phones, the wide angles rule – for one, because there is no space for a decent telephoto (although there are people trying to address that), for another, because in order to aim a selfie correctly you need a wider target area.
Not that long ago, someone – I think on Fstoppers – published an article on how the younger generation – and the ubiquitous cell phones – effectively killed the candid shot. I consider that also a result of the cell phone cameras not having the long focal lengths, so that the photographer can’t easily blend into the background, from where candid shots are taken. And it also has become normal to stand in front of your subjects and “shoot away.” It seems that everyone now has a “photography face” ready, which is nice enough, but tends to hide the real person behind it. – Okay, if I dig any deeper into that now I will have to paraphrase the whole article …
One passing remark to Tony: On top of everything else she is and does, the woman at your side is also a stunning and natural model!
One thing is Bokeh, but you actually need the F1.4 in low light situations to keep the shutter fast, and ISO low. F2.8 could work, but ends up around ISO3200 in a dimly lit church for example.
If PPA is a non-profit organization how do they pay their employees if they don’t make a profit?
Love ya guys ! Laszlo Montreal
Who ever titled this video is not terribly professional.