Why is 85mm considered "the" portrait lens for digital?

[elliot_berlin]

...and I knew that even before asking the question, but the question was useful as a jumping off point.

 

I admit that I didn't know that perspective is a function of distance, not focal length. That's useful information.

 

My reason for asking this question is that I've intended to buy the current 70-200 VR lens to complement by 17-55/2.8 and my other lenses (mostly primes), but if I was to conclude that an 85mm was more important to my kit I could get that first. What I think I'll do now is use either my 50/1.4 or 105/2.8 for portraits and stick with the idea that the 70-200 is the next lens to buy. But in the future I may pick up an 85/1.4 if I get enough freelance work to justify it.

[jautey]

Gee.

I always thought lighting was the most important element in Portraits not the lens, oh that and your subject.

Never even knew there was a "the lens" for portraits.

I really like it when other photographers make something dogma for the rest. Don't you?

[lightsmith1]

"Since its only the DISTANCE to the subject that determines the perspective all the focal length does is define the angular coverage for a given film format or sensor size."

 

This is incorrect and it seems in this era of crop cameras an increasingly common misconception.

First it assumes that there is a fixed distance to a subject when taking a portrait when seldom is this the case. The exaggerated perspective with wide angle lenses occurs only when two elements are both in an image: a close subject and a wider than normal lens. The large nose effect would not happen with a macro lens regardless of how close the lens was to the subject.

 

Changing the focal length changes the relative position and with it the perspective of everything in the frame, which can be a person with a distant tree which appears to be smaller but we mentally process the image and adjust the apparent size of the tree, and at close distances there is a large percentage change in the relative distance of different parts of the subject's head (as we are talking about portraiture). If the nose is closer it has an exaggerated size relative to other parts of the person and if the hand or feet are the closest parts which is not unusual then these parts appear oversize.

 

Focal length also involves foreshortening of perspective and this is a function of image magnification as well as perspective. Consider the tele shots where the sun appears quite large in an image. This enlarged sun is the opposite of what would occur with a wide angle lens in the same situation. With a 200mm lens there is a 4x image magnification regardless of whether a camera is full frame or a crop sensor camera.

 

The choice of a medium telephoto was motivated by the desire to shoot indoors and fill the frame while maintaining a comfortable working distance between the photographer and the subject. It also makes it easier for the photographer to stay out of the lights and not contribute their own shadow to the image. With a 35mm camera these focal lengths were most commonly between 85mm and 105mm and less often with the 135mm which required a larger studio for its use indoors then and this is still a consideration in choosing a lens.

 

This was also a time of hand generated lens calculations. It could take a year of effort to develop a single lens design, and this was with relatively simple designs with only a few elements. Naturally this meant that the top quality lenses were fixed focal length designs. With the advent

of computers for optical design the lens manufacturers have been able to create much more sophisticated designs and even zoom lenses, like the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens, with superior IQ to prime lenses in their range.

 

I find the 85mm lens too long for use indoors on a crop camera where it provides the FOV of a 135mm lens. On a FX camera the 85mm is once again a fun lens to use for portraits, though for me the sweet spot is 105mm. So I often use the 24-70mm on a D300 instead of the 85mm on a D3 for portrait work. What would be fantastic would be a Nikon version of the Canon 24-105mm f4 IS L series pro lens.

[jasonwallace]

someone above captured my exact thought ..... To say their is an ideal lens is silly. It all depends on the effect you are

looking for.

[elliot_berlin]

...I don't have the sense that people who advocate for one particular "portrait" lens are being doctrinaire; what they're doing is trying to provide helpful answers to my question. And I would never take any one reply as gospel; you might say I'm "triangulating" the responses and learning what's useful or offers insight in the replies.

 

I doubt whether anyone would object if I settle on my own choice for a favored portrait lens, whether it's an 85 or not. And, if some people's experience leads them to greatly favor the 85 or another lens then that's just their experience and their way of working talking to them. Nothing wrong with that.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Bruce you are incorrect. The perspective only is determined by the subject to the camera; painter to the mountain; caveman to the game if its a cave image 50,000 years ago. NO camera moves when one changes a lens. Sorry you are confused. Its geometry.:) Perspective ONLY is determined by the point one is viewing the scene from; its doesnt matter if its a human eye; cellphone camera; a 50mm or 85mm lens. <BR><BR>How flat a persons features depends only on the distance; EACH of the persons features are a different distance for the camera. If the person is 1000 feet away; the ratio of the distance to the camera to the ears and nose is about the same; ie unity; ie 1. IF the camera is 5 inches away; is two to one; and the person "appears" to have a giant nose: HUGE nose. All this can be understood with a tape measure.<BR><BR>If somebody moves the vantage point the perspective changes.<BR><BR>Most folks who shoot portraits use a moderate distance; not too far; not too close. The choice of the distance varies by ones culture; some folks are use to be at closer distances and like that look. The distance one is for the object COMPETELY boxes in perspective; it has NOTHING to do with focal length AT ALL. One cannot change the laws of perspective by creating tales.:) This is basic stuff and should be mastered; its in all art books and photo books!<BR><BR>focal length has nothing to do with foreshortening; perspective does; which is ONLY based on distance to object. Foreshortening is because the ratio of the distances is close to one; ie one is FAR away.

[harvey_edelstein1]

They do make the 24-85mm f2.8-4 AFD its a ff lens that got a great write up on Photozone when mated to a DX camera. Not quite as long as the Canon but for a cropped camera its the perfect portait zoom. The wide end is 35mm for group portrait, 50 to 70 for full lengths and couples and waist ups and 70 to look like 105mm and 85 to let you stand off some say in street portraits. Its a very useful lens on either crop or FF cameras.

[sjmurray]

I believe that portraits done with the 85-105mm lenses are popular because we like our soft backgrounds and bokeh, and somewhat flattened features seen in a typical head and shoulders shot. These are just cultural preferences, however. Effective portraits can be made with any lens depending on the imagination and skill of the photographer. An "environmental" portrait might include more background detail using a shorter lens. Throughout the years I have done hundreds of natural light portraits with the 50mm lens on full frame. I like the intimacy of being close and using a fast f-stop. I have used the 28mm lens on occasion for a nice effect. I have also used the 105 a lot and love the bokeh of that lens. My 70's folder has many examples of portraits using a variety of focal lengths (and cameras). I'm using the same lenses on dx cameras and like them for the same reasons. I guess I'm commenting here because I believe the focal length you use depends on many things beyond just making the portrait look like everyone else's. Why would you want to do that?

[JDMvW]

There have ALWAYS been people who liked to take portraits with their 135mm or whatever telephoto. Many of these

people had friends with "prominent" facial features (read, "really big noses"). Most photographers back when

found the compression effect of a "standard telephoto" to be too much to flatter their subjects, especially those

with small noses, so they used 70 to 90mm lenses for portrait work. Just adjust these numbers up or down by your

X1.5 and voila, you have all the arguments presented above in both the modern and in the film era.

 

Like the question about manipulation of images (purity of essence or essence of purity), the question of what

focal length to use for portraits has been around since the first invention of different focal lengths. I can't

lay my hands on it right now, but I'm pretty sure I've seen this debated in 19th century photographic

discussions. It certainly was argued about in the 1930s.

[alan_rockwood]

Going back to 35mm days, I once read that the reason the 90mm to 135mm range of lenses became known as portrait lenses had as much to do with marketing and economics as it did with optimal portrait quality. Normal lenses of that day (50 to 58mm) were not ideal because of the distorted perspective they produced when doing a head or head and shoulders shot. This is because one had to move in close to do a proper in-camera crop.

 

The lenses that were ~100mm focal length were an improvement over the "normal" lenses, and they were relatively inexpensive compared to the longer focal length lenses (e.g. 200mm), so the lenses near 100mm focal length became popular as portrait lenses, despite the fact that longer lenses would have produced a more pleasing result in most cases.

 

In addition, the space available in some studios or indoor locations may have been more amenable to the use of ~100mm lenses than it would be to lenses much longer than this, which would have forced the photographer to back up too far, e.g. limited by walls and such.

 

I suspect that one of the reasons people recommend the 85mm lens as a protrait lens for crop frame cameras is that it was a popular focal length for 35mm, and people just more or less ignore the mental math of converting this focal length to the 35mm equivalent on a crop frame camera... that plus the fact that there aren't many 60 or 70mm lenses for crop frame cameras that would come closer to the equivalent of 90 to 105mm lense on a 35mm camera. Thus, one could round down to 50mm or round up to 85mm, and going a little long (85mm) is probably better than going a little short (50mm) in most cases of crop frame cameras.

 

Sorry for a somewhat rambling reply.

[davebell]

I would think that the distortion created by a wide angle lens, or the "flattening" created by a long telephoto lens are not influenced by the crop factor of the camera. For example, using a 50mm lens on a 2x crop factor body (if one exists or not) doesn't equate to the nice flattening features you would get at the equivalent field of view of 100mm when accounting for the crop factor. If you have severe distortion and you crop the image but retain that big distorted nose and maybe the eyes, then that is what you have - severe distortion. The focal length of the lens remains identical regardless of the crop factor of the body it is attached to, and use of the term "effective focal length" is plainly incorrect. What I am really saying is that one cannot factor in the crop factor (1.3, 1.6 etc.) to gauge the "feature flattening" characterisitc of a lens on a paricular body. All the crop sensor bodies do is display less of the full frame image, nothing else at all. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong....

[kckong]

David Bell, that sounds pretty logical. Why don't we run a live test on it?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but we'd need to have someone with a fullframe body eg D3 or D700 and a 1.5x crop body

eg D200 / 300 etc.

 

Then we'd need, say a prime 90mm (say a Tamron SP macro?) to go on the crop body and a 135 (f2.8) on the

fullframe body.

 

Finally, I'd guess that we want to shoot a portrait of the same subject using both combos. Let's spec that

further - make a headshot portrait that fills the frame, no cropping in PP. Does that sound right?

 

LOL I'd do it if I had a fullframe body and a 135 ... but I don't. Any volunteers?

[philippartridge]

Undiscrimating users. The older film portrait lenses ranged from 85mm to 135mm, with the 105mm FL being about as popular as the 85mm. On DX the only one that remains in the frame is the 85mm...so it has become the fancied lens of many. Nothing special about it; performance is pretty poor if you want even res across the frame.

 

Nikon's failure to make a decent effective 85mm portrait lens (so about a 58mm), indeed any 55-60mm lens in the now concluded DX era spoke volumes about how they saw the future: FX!

 

Personally, I feel the 85mm shot on DX (including the image in this thread) flattens facial features quite badly without making it clear a tele lens was used, which occurs if, say, an effective 180mm FL is used. Caught in the middle, a no man's land.

[kckong]

Oh, I forgot one thing. I'd like to know the actual camera-to-subject distance when using both combos. A visual

experiment will be very insightful, no?

[kelly_flanigan1]

Philip; Re <BR><BR><i>"Nikon's failure to make a decent effective 85mm portrait lens (so about a 58mm),"</i><BR><BR>Here I sometimes use my old Normal lens I bought used in 1962; a 5.8cm F1.4 Nikkor. Mine was AI converted by an aftermarket chap in the 1980's. This lens is the "old F1.4 Normal" the on that was marketed before the 50mm F1.4 came out. Its physically the same size as a 50mm F1.4 of the 1960's thru mid 1970's; but has the longer focal length required to clear the Nikon F's mirror. <BR><BR>Nikon had a 5cm F1.4 for Leica Thread mount and Nikon rangefinders in the 1950's; when the Nikon F came out in 1959 they did not have the optical design of the F mount 50mm F done; it took several years for the 50mm F1.4 to come out for the F camera.<BR><BR> A used 5.8cm F1.4 was once a low cost use lens; say 25 bucks in the 1980's before collectors drove prices back up. Its bettered by the 50mm F1.4 wide open and say at F2 and F2.8 somewhatl but thats not really a problem with a portrait either. It does offer a tad longer focal length the exact focal length you mentioned Nikon failed to make!

[brian.chmura]

I use the Sigma 70 2.8 macro as my primary portrait lens on my D80. 35mm equivalent of 105 and with the 2.8 it's (to me) the perfect portrait lens. Really nice bokeh as well.

 

http://www.bmcfoto.com/gallery/5086728_fzh4B#306253075_TqySJ<div></div>

[frank]

Elliot,

 

though I am a user and a fan of the AF-Nikkor 85/1.4 I have tested a wonderful alternative for crop-cameras like the D300. I recommend the inexpensive Voigtlander Nokton 58/1.4 mm (with CPU in contrast zu the Zeiss ZF lenses). At full aperture the Nokton's center is astonishingly sharp - more than adequate for portrait work. After stopping down to f2.8-4 the whole image is top-notch. Because it is next to impossible to focus fast lenses like the 85/1.4 or the 58/1.4 by hand with the original Nikon screen I have changed the focussing screen of my D200 and put in a screen made by Katz Eye Optics (fits D200 and D300). Wow, what a difference! Now manual focussing is quick and reliable. I recommend the screen and the lens.<div></div>

[ilkka_nissila]

Very simple really. The classical "portrait" lenses for 35mm are the 85, the 105, and the 135 (although some

shoot portraits with anything from 28mm to 300mm). But these prime lenses are specifically optimized for

portraits and yield images with comparatively attenuated skin blemishes and beautiful bokeh. Now, with DX, if you

want to stay within this angle of view range, the only one of these that fits is the 85. It's IMO too long for

indoor studio portraits, but people with larger studios may disagree.

 

Anyway, Nikon never made prime portrait lenses specifically for DX, although the f/2.8 zooms of late have much

improved bokeh compared to past versions, e.g. the 70-200 is excellent but quite scary ;-) I am happy to be back

with the original angles of view of the 85, 105, and 135 with FX sensors.

 

For DX I think the new 60mm and 105mm micro-nikkors would also come to mind, as they've got better bokeh than the

AF-D versions, and the 105 mm at least doesn't exaggerate fine details in the way older micro-nikkors do. So at

least the 105 VR is very much okay for this purpose.

[markci]

Sounds like a straw-man argument. Who exactly is doing this "considering?" Try to rewrite your post in the active voice with actual subjects identified. I bet you can't do it.

[lou korell]

There are probably a lot of technical reasons for why the 85-135 range has always been a standard portrait range. Remember that tradional definitions for portraiture are still being utilized to this day.

 

But you always have the option to use your own vision for what a portrait is. There are photographers using everything from fisheye to 300mm for portraits. My gosh, people even resort to using zooms! Unheard of in older days for standard portraiture. In fact if you go back far enough portraits were really a realm for large format only - 4x5 & 8x10.

 

It is fine if you want to limit portraiture to a certain type of genre, but I have shot many successful portraits using 24,35,50,85,100,135,180,300mm primes and 24-70,28-70,20-35,35-70,70-200 zooms.

Why not?

 

How do you capture the personality of a person if your shots are not unique to that person? Same lens, same angle, same exposure, same lighting - there's your portrait. Really? I don't subscribe to that idea. Maybe I'm an outcast but I really don't like to categorize or classify the portraiture that I do.

Everybody has a different look so why try to put them all in the same frame?

 

It may be that some lenses, as Ilkka says above, are optimized for portraits - if that is the criteria you are looking for in your portraits. With digital photography you pretty much have an unlimited set of tools to play with in the creation of portraits. If you are a purist and like it straight out of the camera, it probably makes sense to stick with these so-called optimized lenses as your basics for traditional portraiture dictate. But then, with thousands of people shooting that way, why not be different?

 

Just my random thoughts on the subject. I personally think a good lens is a good lens. Use your vision to decide what a portrait is for your subject and then choose your weapon. :)

 

Lou

[david carver]

I have no idea what Mark Ci is talking about. Mark, can you explain your comment? What is your point?

[elliot_berlin]

There are probably 3 dozen replies on this thread, and until yours all were well-intentioned. In the context of the other replies I have a hard time understanding why you take a seemingly condescending tone in your post. No one is saying that there's a "law" about a given lens being "the" portrait lens. But the range of replies clearly supports the idea that the 85mm is very popular as a portrait lens. All I was really trying to uncover with this thread were the reasons why it's so popular and if it's as popular in a cropped image context as in full frame. Consider it an "historical" inquiry rather than a search for a rule I must follow.

 

Oddly, the tone of your message suggests you took the way I phrased the question as a personal insult. How could that be?

[kelly_flanigan1]

Historiically painters and sketchers place their subject a certajn distance away; not 1 foot; not 20 feet!. Thus the painter personal choice of the perspective drives the distance. Thus again the choice of focal length for a given format or sensor only determines the angular coverage; since the distance is definedand boxed in by the perspective one wants.

[ilkka_nissila]

<i>if you are a purist and like it straight out of the camera, it probably makes sense to stick with these so-called

optimized lenses as your basics for traditional portraiture dictate</i>

<p>

It should be noted here that with a portrait in this context, one generally means a head shot or a head-and-shoulders

shot. If you make an image of a whole person or from the waist up, for example, one would use a wider angle. But for a head

shot it makes sense to use a lens which produces a result which doesn't exaggerate micro-detail. Unlike when you're

photographing small critters, for example.

<p>

The closer you get at the capture stage to how you want the picture to look, the less time you have to spend in post-

processing. Personally I am tired of the long hours spent in editing images. I would rather shoot it right from the get go

and free some of that time.

<p>

<i>But then, with thousands of people shooting that way, why not be different?</i>

<p>

Actually, few people do it that way, many people nowadays fiddle with their portraits in PS to be unsightly with plastic-

like skin and then oversharpen the image to a point where I'm positively disgusted. That's the norm now, and using a

classic portrait lens with minimal post-processing to make a portrait in good taste is unusual.

[markci]

<i>I have no idea what Mark Ci is talking about. Mark, can you explain your comment? What is your point?</i>

<p>

My point is that saying something "is considered" something is a pretty meaningless statement unless we know who is doing the considering. Having to rewrite the question in the active voice with an identified subject (e.g. "Henri Cartier-Bresson considered" or "a majority of photographers in recent poll considered"...) might actually be helpful in explaining the phenomenon, including whether or not said phenomenon actually exists.

<p>

Most of it IMO is lazy, largely web-based pseudo-knowledge that gets passed around from web site to web site. In fact portraits have always been taken with a wide variety of focal lengths.

<p>

It's all a bit like the oft-cited "they" who are the source for all sorts of dubious wisdom. "Well, that's what they say."