 BetterPhoto Member |
Best lens for portraits for Canon EOS Digital Rebe I'm planning to buy a Canon EOS Digital Rebel, and am trying to find out the best lenses to use for portrait photography. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!
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Jon Close |
The 1.6x crop factor makes the usual choices of EF 100 f/2 USM and 135 f/2.8 Soft Focus a little long, making them equivalent to 160mm and 216. I'd go with either the EF 50 f/1.4 USM (crops to 80mm equivalent in the 10D and DRebel), EF 85 f/1.8 USM (crops to 136mm equivalent), or EF 24-70 f/2.8L USM (38-112 equivalent).
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Or you could still buy those same lenses that are usually considered portrait lenses and back up a few steps if you can. But a portrait lens to me has been which ever lens you use at the time to take a good portrait. Don't get locked into portraits being taken with only certain kinds of lenses. Or anything else for that matter. A portrait can be taken with a wide angle just as well with a 400mm. Incorporate the background, or just shoot the face. Portraits come in different ways, different looks. Try as many as you can.
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Denyse Clark |
I have the digital rebel (and the 35mm rebel G) and although I'm no technical expert, I'm with Gregory on this one. I've gotten great portrait shots with a variety of lenses. I use the Canon 28-105 the most, it's a good multipurpose lens.
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robert G. Fately |
Alison, Gregory is right about not getting locked into a particular focal length for portraits, though indeed in the 35MM world the 85 to 135 MM focal lengths were typically the lenses of choice for traditional head-and-shoulders type shots. As Jon points out, because of the crop factor you would mimic these lengths with the 50 or 85MM lenses. However, one thing to consider, particularly with lenses of 50MM and up, is that you may want to use a prime lens with a fast speed (large aperture, or low f-number). This is because a wider aperture affords shallower depth of field, and if you like the look in a portrait where the subject's face is in sharp focus but the hedges or wall or whatever in the background is blurred out, you will want to be able to minimize that DOF.
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