What lens is good for portrait shooting?

Abstract: What lens is good for taking portraits? Fixed focus or zoom for portrait shooting? For beginners, it is a headache to choose a lens to shoot portraits. Next, let's learn which portrait lens to choose for the next shot. Portrait lens Select the lens used when shooting portraits, and use fixed focus or zoom.

Friends who have just come into contact with portrait 2 photography are often confused when faced with many "long guns and short guns": "Which lens is most suitable for portrait shooting?"

As far as my personal experience is concerned, the commonly used lens with a focal length of 16mm to 200mm can be competent for shooting environmental portraits. The key is what kind of visual effect you want to create.

In order to let us have an intuitive understanding of the focal length of the lens, let's do a simple experiment: let the model stand about ten meters in front of the forest, and shoot a portrait with Theory of Three Represents's ultra-wide-angle, medium-focus and telephoto focal lengths of 16mm, 85mm and 200mm respectively, and the aperture is set to F/2.8. We will find that the figure of 16mm is seriously deformed, the trees behind it are photographed the most, the forest has a feeling of being "pushed away", and the ambiguity of leaves is weak; At 85mm, the perspective relationship between the figure and the forest behind is close to what the naked eye can see, and the leaves are obviously blurred; The trees photographed at 200mm are the least, and the distance between the figure and the trees behind him is narrowed, which has a "sense of compression" and the blur is further increased.

From this, we draw a rule:

2 wide-angle lens:

With a large viewing angle, you can shoot a larger scene, objects are near, far and small, the distance between vertical objects is pushed far, and the ability to blur the background is weak.

Medium focal length lens:

The perspective is natural, similar to what the human eye can see, and the blur ability is obviously stronger than that of a wide-angle lens.

Telephoto lens:

The smallest viewing angle can enlarge distant objects, and the distance between vertical objects is "reduced", which has the strongest ability to blur the background.

If we master this rule, we can use it flexibly in actual shooting and shoot pictures with different visual effects, thus highlighting the theme of the work.

Wide angle lens:

Using the wide viewing angle of its digital camera, it shows a big scene and takes photos of the atmosphere. In order to avoid large deformation, when shooting a portrait with a super wide-angle lens, it is necessary to avoid putting the character too close to the edge.

Using the focal length of 16mm, the head and hands of the character are not obviously deformed because they are close to the center of the picture.

Using the principle of perspective deformation, the subject can be deformed appropriately, highlighting the key points and strengthening the theme.

Shooting with 24mm lens, because the lens is very close to the model's hand, the hand and pigeon become exaggerated, which has a visual impact of rushing out of the picture.

In a vast scene, people and scenery are clearly displayed by using the weak fuzzy ability of the super wide-angle lens.

What lens is best for taking portraits?

When shooting with a focal length of 28mm, the details of people and scenery can be taken into account.

Medium focal length lens:

When shooting people with a medium focus lens, because of its natural perspective, the angle of view will not be too big or too small, and the picture will easily appear "dull". Therefore, it is best to choose some distinctive scene elements to see the whole leopard and explain the environment.

Although the 85mm lens can't capture more scene elements like the wide-angle lens, the rattan leaves clearly interpret the environment from point to surface.

The 85mm lens is usually called the "portrait lens", and manufacturers usually design a big circle for it, which can get an unreal Jiao Wai effect, especially useful when shooting female portraits.

Telephoto lens:

When the background or foreground is far away from the character and you want to emphasize the relationship between them, you can "compress" them together with a longer focal length.

Using 200mm focal length and 2x zoom lens, the snowy mountain opposite Sailimu Lake is greatly reduced, the picture becomes clean and the theme is more prominent.

The foreground is only half as deep as the depth of field behind. When shooting with a focal length of 200mm, the plant blur in front of the model is particularly serious.

The telephoto lens has a small viewing angle, so the photographer can cut the subject according to his own needs to form a "compact" picture effect and directly highlight the subject.

To sum up, any lens can shoot a portrait, and the key is what kind of picture effect the photographer wants. Knowing this, we should consciously spend more time to get familiar with the characteristics of wide-angle, medium-focus and telephoto lenses, so that we can use different lens focal lengths to "draw" the desired picture at will in our creation.

Whenever a new friend who is just getting started asks this question, many so-called professionals recommend 85MM/ 1.4, 105MM/2, 135MM/2 and so on. As soon as they speak.

It is said that the imaging is sharp, the background is blurred, and zooming is repulsive. It is said that photographers should not take pictures for fear of trouble.

Is that really the case? I don't recommend shooting people with a fixed-focus lens above 85, because on digital machines, 85 is equivalent to the focal length of127 ~136 mm. If it is longer, for example, 135MM, you have to step back ten or twenty meters to shoot the whole body, which is really inconvenient to communicate with the person being photographed.

I think beginners have a vague concept of focal length. First, use a standard zoom lens with a focal length of 28-85mm (in fact, the most common focal length I shoot is between 24-70mm, which makes the composition more convenient and flexible. Perhaps this statement is quite different from the focal length of 85- 135MM which is widely rumored in China. It's not too late to buy a fixed-focus lens with a specific focal length after you are familiar with these focal lengths.

Some people say that the quality of fixed-focus imaging is good, which I don't deny, but how big can the difference be? Can you see the obvious difference without zooming in to 18 inch? If it is not professional commercial photography, general personal hobbies, or studio portraits will not care too much about the loss of zoom lens quality. Moreover, it is worthwhile to sacrifice a little image quality for the flexibility of composition and save the trouble of changing the lens.

Others say that using a fixed-focus lens can make people calm down and devote themselves to photography, zooming and composition. Zoom lens will make people impetuous, and only zooming will keep still and composition will be more rigid.

I think this statement is very incorrect. If an impetuous person uses fixed focus, he can't calm down and always wants to change the lens. A day's time is wasted on changing lenses, which will also damage the machine and the CCD will go up in smoke. If a cool-headed person uses a zoom lens, he will also walk back and forth to take pictures, and he can freely choose different focal lengths according to each scene without always thinking about changing the lens.

Therefore, professionals should stop recommending novella focus to newcomers. This may just be your personal preference. Don't mislead new people, let others feel that filming people must focus on these.