Portrait lens and its characteristics

As it is already clear from the title, the portrait lens is one that is used to shoot portraits and gives it certain advantages to the photographer. In fact, despite the widespread opinion, as such, "portrait" lenses do not exist. That is, manufacturers, releasing the lens, do not expect it specifically for any particular type of shooting. Therefore, often there is a lot of controversy about what should be the best portrait lens. It does not take into account the fact that all photographers are photographed in different conditions, each of them has its own distinctive handwriting and its priorities. Therefore, in this article, we will look at the characteristics of the lenses most commonly used for portrait photography.

The very first and main characteristic of any lens is its aperture. The aperture is indicated by the marking f, which carries information about the maximum aperture. It's simple: the wider the aperture of your lens, the more light you get on the matrix, the more light you have. The smaller the number f, the wider the aperture can open. The portrait lens should have a high aperture, which will create clear details, which is extremely important in portrait photography. For example, the Canon EF 85mm f / 1.2 portrait lens is considered one of the most revealing by this criterion and far exceeds many others.

To select a portrait lens, it is important to determine which focal length you most often use. It is well known that for shooting portraits it is better to use fixes (ie lenses with an unchanged focal length), and not zoom lenses, since they have a greater aperture due to the lack of a block of lenses that are responsible for approaching. Many professionals believe that the portrait lens should have a focal length of 50 to 200 mm. And the greater focal length gives a more beautiful bokeh - a blur picture - and assumes a greater distance between the photographer and the model. That is, if you shoot in a small studio, then the portrait lens by 200 mm you to anything. You can, of course, opt for a zoom lens to be able to adjust the distance from the camera to the model to your taste, but its use will require good lighting. In addition, a good zoom lens is usually more expensive than fix.

Secondary, but equally important characteristics - the presence of an image stabilization system and the type of focus. The image stabilizer compensates for camera shake, so it will never be superfluous. Focusing is a bit more complicated. It is better, of course, to choose a lens with two kinds of focusing - manual and automatic. If, say, you are accustomed to using only manual, it is still worth remembering that sometimes spontaneous situations occur when it is simply long or inconvenient to seek the focus manually.

So, before choosing a lens for shooting portraits, decide how you plan to use it. And, depending on what you need, set priorities for yourself and determine the most optimal characteristics. This will allow you to narrow down the range of searches, as well as not to doubt the correctness of your choice.