Tom Bryan wrote:
If I attach an 85mm lens to one of my full-frame DSLRs, hold it in portrait orientation, and then open both eyes and look through the viewfinder, I see that both of the images from each eye line up, almost like I'm not looking through a lens at all. Do the same with a 50mm lens and you’ll find that you can no longer merge the two images together. This happens because the 50mm lens is distorting its field of view.  This is the theory behind why the 85mm is the classic sweet spot focal length for portraits and why I select the 85mm as my go-to portrait lens.

The result you got was dependent on viewfinder magnification. With a different camera you'd get a different match to your eye in fl.

And really, that's all focal length is - magnification. It doesn't have any effect on perspective at all - that comes purely from the distance you shoot. Shoot at 15m with a 200 and a 28 and perspective will be the same.

Mark Salo wrote:
If "Classic Portrait" means head shots, 50mm is way too short on full frame.  85mm is minimally acceptable.

105mm to 135mm is what I go for.

That's the classic answer, and I agree, but I'd shy away from 135mm.

These "classic" lenses became classic because they did the job well.  In particular, these lenses minimize distortions on the face -- they avoid the "big nose" one gets with "normal" or wide angle lenses, and they avoid the unnatural flattening the longer (more telephoto) lenses yields.  And with enough space in the studio, you can still get a full body shot done with an 85mm lens.

Looknsee Photography wrote:
That's the classic answer, and I agree, but I'd shy away from 135mm.

These "classic" lenses became classic because they did the job well.

#

That's hardly the whole story.

Back when the classic fl's were evolved, shooting at 400iso was edgy stuff. So people needed bright lenses, and a fast 200mm would have been very heavy and expensive.

400 bitd is the equivalent of, what, 3200 now? And quite a few people use crop factor - I do - which cuts lens weight enormously for the same equivalent fl.  So shooting with a reasonably  fast 200mm equivalent lens is cheap for me, doesn't weigh me down - I use an old Pentax 135mm that weighs less than a modern kit zoom - and costs damn all. And the perspective, for a close head shot, is much better than a 100mm equivalent. A 100mm isn't really very different to an 85mm and the close headshots in the recent Nikon 85mm thread demonstrated how awful a perspective it gives for close headshots.

thiswayup wrote:

#

That's hardly the whole story.

Back when the classic fl's were evolved, shooting at 400iso was edgy stuff. So people needed bright lenses, and a fast 200mm would have been very heavy and expensive.

400 bitd is the equivalent of, what, 3200 now? And quite a few people use crop factor - I do - which cuts lens weight enormously for the same equivalent fl.  So shooting with a reasonably  fast 200mm equivalent lens is cheap for me, doesn't weigh me down - I use an old Pentax 135mm that weighs less than a modern kit zoom - and costs damn all. And the perspective, for a close head shot, is much better than a 100mm equivalent. A 100mm isn't really very different to an 85mm and the close headshots in the recent Nikon 85mm thread demonstrated how awful a perspective it gives for close headshots.

Speaking only for myself, the advantage of an 85 over a 135 is that if you only own a lens or two, it is always a good choice, even if it is not always the best choice.

If I could only own a couple lenses(and I'm not far from that), one of them would have to be an 85-100.

Zack Zoll wrote:

Speaking only for myself, the advantage of an 85 over a 135 is that if you only own a lens or two, it is always a good choice, even if it is not always the best choice.

If I could only own a couple lenses(and I'm not far from that), one of them would have to be an 85-100.

Yes, but that has to depend on the range you take portraits at, the type of places you work, etc. For headshots, outdoors, my one lens would be at least 200mm. And I can now see why some pro fashion shooters use that fl or longer even for whole body shots - you get much more freedom in positioning the hands without perspective swelling. If I was shooting fashion professionally, I'd try renting one of the long, very well stabilized Fuji zooms.

Personality Imaging wrote:
Keep in mind that only a true 85 mm lens has the perspective of an 85 mm lens.   Shorter lenses on subframe sensors may have the same angle of acceptance as an 85 mm lens on a full frame sensor,  but only an 85 mm lens gives what is considered the perfect portrait perspective.   Perspective and angle of acceptance are totally different.

Sorry: completely wrong. No focal length has a perspective; perspective is completely a matter of distance. Which means that the perspective for 85 will be different at torso and c lose headshot range - it doesn't have a single perspective, let alone a perfect one. Again, no lens does.

Read this:

https://www.mhohner.de/newsitem2/myths/8

..You don't even have to understand the text; the text images alone show that fl and perspective aren't related.

And go look at the close headshots in the Nikon 85mm thread - the perspective is only perfect if you like giant noses with swollen tips.

L O C U T U S wrote:
Nikkor 180mm F2.8D

..That's exactly the lens that the missing equivalent of now most bothers me with Fuji. A Fuji version would be, what, around a 120mm f2?

Tom Bryan wrote:
Bottom Line - If I could only take one lens to a portrait shoot, without hesitation it would be a 85mm lens.

What about you?

Me too. Absolutely.

A 50mm on 24x36 (full frame) displays ~47° - this is roughly the angle normal people with two eyes see sharp and unblurred. (The total angle of sight is much bigger but that's what you see sharp and unblurred.)

A 85mm on 24x36 displays ~27° - this is roughly the part you really percieve without moving the eyeballs. It's the angle you concentrate on.

The depth of field is perfect. The maximum aperture - 1:2.0, 1:1.8, 1:1.4 - is big enough to determine what parts of the picture shall be sharp and which parts shall be out of focus. You can reduce it on the eye level. You can extend it from the tip of the nose to the hairs of the back part of the head.

thiswayup wrote:

Yes, but that has to depend on the range you take portraits at, the type of places you work, etc. For headshots, outdoors, my one lens would be at least 200mm. And I can now see why some pro fashion shooters use that fl or longer even for whole body shots - you get much more freedom in positioning the hands without perspective swelling. If I was shooting fashion professionally, I'd try renting one of the long, very well stabilized Fuji zooms.

I don't disagree. There was a time when I took different photos, and I used a 135 pretty much whenever I had room to. In those days, I lusted after Nikon's 200 f/2 like nobody's business.

But now my priorities are different, both in terms of the images I make and in how much stuff I want to own and carry around. Right now my digital kit is a 20, 50, and a Minolta 100 macro - and I barely use the high magnification option, so one day that macro will be a 90 and a close up filter or extension tube, since those things take up very little room in the bag.

I'm always trying to pare down and simplify, so I tend to prefer gear that does double duty. But back in the days when I had a backpack full of gear, I would have agreed that the best portrait lens was the longest one that you had room to use.

L O C U T U S wrote:
Nikkor 180mm F2.8D

have one and love it

I used to hump the 200/2 to shoots and its results are unrivaled really
but it was like taking a child out, way to cumbersome

tried the 70-200 route and its rendering was too clinical for me
the 180 has more "character"....whatever that means...

my shoot kit is usually 50/ 1.4....85/1.4....and 180/2.8

though once in a while I substitute 135/2 for the 180..

Zack Zoll wrote:
I'm always trying to pare down and simplify, so I tend to prefer gear that does double duty. But back in the days when I had a backpack full of gear, I would have agreed that the best portrait lens was the longest one that you had room to use.

I think the cheapest counts as well. And I love built-in lens hoods, because I'm less likely to lose them. And if I'm shooting unstablized then I like the centre of gravity closer to the body rather than further.

And I agree with what you said - in another thread - or at least implied - which is that minimizing element numbers helps, all things being equal, with contrast. I love the Pentax SMC A 135 = 200 on Fuji that I'm using. Coatings seem to be up to modern standards and the lens has only 5 elements. If I could buy the same thing with autofocus for my Fuji, I would. I'm sure it doesn't have edge resolution in the same astounding class as the Fuji 90mm with its 11 elements, but edge resolution is something I'm willing to compromise on a portrait tele. Standards and wide angles are another matter - with wides I *usually* put the subject on the edge.

Minolta seem to be another very good bet for classic lenses with good colour rendering. Obviously Contax are too - and I hear a lot bout Rollei HFT lenses. But Pentax A and M or Minoltas seem to be the best bargains.

-fpc- wrote:

have one and love it

I used to hump the 200/2 to shoots and its results are unrivaled really
but it was like taking a child out, way to cumbersome

That's 3kg? Maybe you could attach a drone to one and have it hover, holding the weight of the lens all the time. It's an astonishing lens and it must have hurt to give it up.

One of the best 85 equivalents I've seen is the one on the Sigma DP3's:

http://luminous-landscape.com/articleIm … hoto16.jpg

thiswayup wrote:

That's 3kg? Maybe you could attach a drone to one and have it hover, holding the weight of the lens all the time. It's an astonishing lens and it must have hurt to give it up.

One of the best 85 equivalents I've seen is the one on the Sigma DP3's:

http://luminous-landscape.com/articleIm … hoto16.jpg

I do miss it from time to time
but the weight/ bulk was too much
plus I needed a couple of extra $$

thiswayup wrote:

I think the cheapest counts as well. And I love built-in lens hoods, because I'm less likely to lose them. And if I'm shooting unstablized then I like the centre of gravity closer to the body rather than further.

And I agree with what you said - in another thread - or at least implied - which is that minimizing element numbers helps, all things being equal, with contrast. I love the Pentax SMC A 135 = 200 on Fuji that I'm using. Coatings seem to be up to modern standards and the lens has only 5 elements. If I could buy the same thing with autofocus for my Fuji, I would. I'm sure it doesn't have edge resolution in the same astounding class as the Fuji 90mm with its 11 elements, but edge resolution is something I'm willing to compromise on a portrait tele. Standards and wide angles are another matter - with wides I *usually* put the subject on the edge.

Minolta seem to be another very good bet for classic lenses with good colour rendering. Obviously Contax are too - and I hear a lot bout Rollei HFT lenses. But Pentax A and M or Minoltas seem to be the best bargains.

I agree, especially with the last point. As a mirrorless user, I love the fact that I can use just about anything.

Not every Pentax lens is a winner, but very few of them suck - especially considering what they go for. Minolta MD lenses are much the same:  there are a few stinkers, but you usually get your value and them some.

I did like the Nikon AiS lenses a lot as well, aside from the wide angles. That is probably the most consistent non-German, non-cine lens line ever, as far as contrast, colour, and rendering. Almost everything matches.

But they seem to have gone up in price in recent years, and now I don't like them quite as much. They're still a good product, but there are better options for the price now.

Olympus lenses are still cheap, and they're almost all good - especially the wides. Just stay away from the zooms and you've got yourself a winner.

Dan Dozer wrote:
So, my question for you digital shooters (I am really interested in this) is whether you shoot with a Nikon, a Canon, a Leica, a Hassleblad, or whatever lens, how much difference is there actually in the final image if the focal lengths are all the same?  I actually am curious about this and I'm not trying to say anything negative about digital equipment.

You're asking how similar images are if people use the same fl on different cameras? Or the same *equivalent* fl on different digital cameras?

They can be extremely different. In fact, my experience - which is I admit is probably freakishly atypical - is that sensors can vary more than colour films. Take a look at the protraits in the link I gave re. the Sigma DP3 above and then look the first shot in my portrait. See the huge difference in skin rendering? That's the difference between a Sigma Foveon and a Fuji X-Trans of the same size and it dwarfs the difference between, say, Astia and Velvia. The Fuji sensor is biased to pick up what you might call the flattering variation in skin and the Sigma is effectively biased against doing so, because its red detectors are below the blue and the green. So the Sigma is better at picking up contrast information about skin flaws than it is at rendering what you want it to render. You can change the overall colour balance, but unless you shoot in excellent light skin from Foveon looks terrible because the wrong detail was biased for.

Zack Zoll wrote:
I have actually found the opposite. Because digital is an electronic process, rather than chemical, there are many fewer variables.

...Not when a Sigma Foveon is involved, I promise you. The three layer sensor interacts with the subject and light in a horribly complex fashion - detail and dr drop faster in the red channel than anywhere else, MUCH faster, while at the same time noise kicks in there. Obviously this effect is dependent on the colour of light as well. And what the exact rules are for working our when the Giant Magenta Blotches will appear, I don't know.

But that may be a unique case. And the Sigma Merrill's can produce amazingly beautiful results in some circumstances. I think rather than talking about chemical vs digital you need to talk about chemical vs bayer sensor and foveon sensor once the Merrill is involved, because it is *that* different.

that means that the colour cast of the lenses has a much greater impact with digital as well, assuming you care about that sort of thing.

...Because although it is easy to correct overall balance, the lens will bias what detail is picked up originally??? I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense.

Dan Dozer wrote:
This is interesting and just what I was curious about.  From what you guys are saying, there might be just as many variables between camera types regarding sensors as there are between lenses.

I think that Zack is right and that I've experienced two extreme cases. It's something like this:

sigma.............................................................nikon,olympus,panasonic,sony,canon......fuji

Nikon to Canon is like, oh, Mediterranean Europe. Fuji might be the UK or Germany. Then with Sigma you're in Japan. Pre-Perry Japan. Or modern North Korea. 90% of the difference is in that one outlier, and most of the remaining difference is in the next. I'm probably the only person here crazy enough to have jumped between them, and most of the digital world's population lives in the Med'.

Zack Zoll wrote:
I believe I was unclear when I said there were more variables with a chemical process than an electronic one.

What I mean is that if you have hard water, live at high altitudes, or have the temperature a little too high or low, the results change. When using a refreshed colour developing system like in a commercial lab, the age and amount of use of the chemicals matters too.

If your colour processor is a few degrees off, or if the processing motors aren't moving at exactly the right speed, you end up with different contrast and colour. You can do that on purpose(push/pull processing), and a good lab tech can further use these techniques to correct some problems.

Actually, sensor performance will be somewhat temperature dependent - more heat, more noise. And people ignore raw development, especially demosaicing  - this can have a big effect. Lightroom often destroys fine detail in Fuji images.

But no, not as complex or subtle as hard water, developer age, etc.

But on the flip side, it's also not like you can pop a different roll of film in the camera and suddenly like it more.

Fuji film simulations actually are good enough so that you might feel that way, especially once you tweak shadow and highlight tone. They're much deeper than any of the post processing simulations I've tried. And I think most serious Fuji shooters would pay several hundred dollars to get the XPro2's new Acros simulation:

http://fujifilm-x.com/en/x-stories/the- … ion-acros/

I also experienced a big change in my b&w work when I went from merely desaturing to decomposing and doing grain merges - with red as a base when I take people shots. And again when I started using GMIC. Using those two options really did give me the equivalent of new films.

..Again, I'm almost certainly a freak outlier. I'm shooting Fuji, and I'm from a tech industry background, with a physics degree and experience in computer graphics systems, so I'm going to apply post processing very differently to most people. All the same, a lot of Fuji X shooters do use the film simulations as a big part of their shooting.

Dan Dozer wrote:
When I first opened this thread, I thought it was going to be about what lens creates the best look for you, instead of what focal length do you like best for portrait work.  I saw "classic" and thought - "oh that means old and I shoot with a lot of old stuff".  I guess I was wrong. 

I'm an old fashioned dedicated film shooter and work with an 8 x 10 camera, sheet film, and lenses that are many times over 100 years old.  I don't really know much of anything about digital equipment and don't have an interest in learning.  However, I'm not a "film is the only way to go" kind of photographer.  Digital is just another way to create images and it's every bit as good as the old fashioned way of doing things.

All that being said, when I'm looking at shooting a portrait, I'm much more concerned with what the final look of the image I want to create will be.  That standard focal length lens I use is 360 mm which as I understand it, is something close to a little more than a 50 mm lens with a 35mm camera.   This focal length is or two reasons.  First is that there is a huge amount of old lenses of that size on the market for me to choose from and second, if I put a 480 mm lens on my camera, the bellows isn't long enough for it.  So, I'm kind of stuck with that focal length of lens.  I've also shot portrait type of images with lenses down to about 240 mm which is a wide angle lens.  I've got probably 10 lenses that I use mostly and do portrait work with all of them.  The look of each is very different from each other - so different that you can see it from all the way across the room. 

So, my question for you digital shooters (I am really interested in this) is whether you shoot with a Nikon, a Canon, a Leica, a Hassleblad, or whatever lens, how much difference is there actually in the final image if the focal lengths are all the same?  I actually am curious about this and I'm not trying to say anything negative about digital equipment.

Dan,

Funny you should ask that.  Over the last four decades I've used 35mm's, Nikon's, Canon's, Leica's and Olympus.  While I shot a lot of Tri-X, I also shot a lot of K-14 and during the last decade I've been doing my own scanning, medium level desk top scanner and I can say that optically the old Canon FD glass beats them all.  I will add that the NIKON D800 opens up a whole new photographic world, but old NIKKOR's don't cut it.

Robb Mann wrote:
There really is no one 'perfect' portrait lens

I think the idea that there is comes from the myth that focal lengths rather than distances create perspective. One you understand that this isn't true then it's obvious that a lens that may work for a head and shoulders can require you to get too close for a chin-to-forehead shot, distorting the face.

The problems with using too long a focal length otoh having to stand to faraway to communicate with the model when you want wider shots. So possibly there *is* a lot to be said for using a good zoom.

, but a classic 85 f1.4 is certainly a widely used focal length. If I had to pick an 'ultimate' portrait lens within Nikon's lineup I'd say either the 135 f2.0 DC or the 200 f2 VR. I have even used my 135 DC on my Fuji to great effect.

I find a 135mm on Fuji is an excellent tool for close headshots. But I think I'll try the cheap 50-230 Fuji zoom. Because it is cheap, it has OIS, it's light, and it covers 80-200mm equivalent in one lens. And the MTF results wouldn't raise eyebrows for a Canon L series lens. If I hate it then I'll just sell it for what I paid.