NIKON- Best Portrait lens!?! MONEY NO OBJECT!

Hacker said:
My final point in this rambling post is why you really want portrait pictures to be so pin sharp. Many portraits are ruined by being over sharp IMO...
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Good point. I remember back in the 1970's my first SLR was an Olympus (OM10, followed by OM2n then OM4). I chose the brand especially because it was said that the softness of Olympus lenses made them better than Nikon/Canon for portraits... David Bailey was a user which, at the time, gave them a lot of credibility for portraiture.

Flashy
 
Flashman said:
Good point. I remember back in the 1970's my first SLR was an Olympus (OM10, followed by OM2n then OM4). I chose the brand especially because it was said that the softness of Olympus lenses made them better than Nikon/Canon for portraits... David Bailey was a user which, at the time, gave them a lot of credibility for portraiture.

Flashy
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Thats extemely interesting, I think ive come across as wanting the sharpest pictures possible which is not quite the case, I just wasnt happy with the 50mm some of time, but on review it seems like 90% of the ones i was unhappy with were at 1.4. Also I have just ordered the lens hood as I think flare has been effecting some of my images.
 
Hacker said:
My final point in this rambling post is why you really want portrait pictures to be so pin sharp. Many portraits are ruined by being over sharp IMO and with a digital camera you will only ever get a certain amount of sharpness due to the anti-aliasing filter, any picture you take will require sharpening in post production.
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This is actually a good point Colin, but it's also an argument in favour of the 85mm 1.2. Used wide open the DOF is extremely shallow. Careful focusing will get the eyes in sharp focus, but DOF falls off so sharply at both sides of that point, that beautiuful soft skin tones result. It's a very forgiving, very flattering lens. It's also capable of making the most intrusive background blend into something resembling an impressionist painting.

85mm f1.2 wide open. The brown/white blur at lower left is a block of flats right behind the guy!

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Stopped down just a stop or two though and it becomes cruelly sharp!
 
Just sticking my Canon nose a bit further into your Nikon thread, I'd have to say a quality zoom covering the 70-120 range will do you a good job but if you really want the shiznitz, then get the Nikon 85mm 1.4, which will give the wide open soft look, or stop down for those biting character shots.

50mm isn't an ideal portrait length for good perspective, and it's also rather intimidating for subjects working that close.
 
CT said:
Just sticking my Canon nose a bit further into your Nikon thread, I'd have to say a quality zoom covering the 70-120 range will do you a good job but if you really want the shiznitz, then get the Nikon 85mm 1.4, which will give the wide open soft look, or stop down for those biting character shots.

50mm isn't an ideal portrait length for good perspective, and it's also rather intimidating for subjects working that close.
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wow that 85 1.2 is cool, shame its for the cannon though, at least it rules it out. Im not too bothered about having a zoom as im quite happy using my legs. I do think my next purchase will be the 85mm 1.4 or 1.8 but im going to experiment with my 50mm 1.4 a bit more first.
 
CT said:
This is actually a good point Colin, but it's also an argument in favour of the 85mm 1.2. Used wide open the DOF is extremely shallow. Careful focusing will get the eyes in sharp focus, but DOF falls off so sharply at both sides of that point, that beautiuful soft skin tones result. It's a very forgiving, very flattering lens. It's also capable of making the most intrusive background blend into something resembling an impressionist painting.

85mm f1.2 wide open. The brown/white blur at lower left is a block of flats right behind the guy!

2400244901_57c514bbbf_o.jpg


Stopped down just a stop or two though and it becomes cruelly sharp!
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CT - I want this lens badly :D

Gary.
 
EdinburghGary said:
CT - I want this lens badly :D

Gary.
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And a Canon body to go with it? :D

It's a bit of a monster, everything about it is extreme, from the weight to the slow focus, and focus has to be spot on wide open or you just get nowt, but it's an exciting lens, and it enables you to do available shots in virtually any light.
 
CT said:
And a Canon body to go with it? :D
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Nikon are really missing a trick by not having an equivalent :( . My 1.4 is prolly my favourite lens but I'd love to get that extra stop for more extreme occasions. Maybe Nikon are working on a 1.1 instead? ;)

Flashy
 
theory is correct - a 50mm lens on a DX body will give exactly the same effect as a 75mm lens on a FX body. The reason is that you stand the same distance from the subject in both cases to take the same portrait, and distance from the subject is what causes effects like foreshortening.

Imagine three images taken with three lenses - all on an FX body. A 20mm, a 50mm and a 75mm lens. Take all three images 20 feet from the subject. Now, zoom into the same portion of the image in all three cases (the subject's face) and the image will be identical.

The reason a wide angle lens makes a person's features look distorted in a full face portrait is because you're standing 6 inches away from them. If you took the same portrait with the same lens from 20 feet away and cropped to just the face, it would have much less distortion, of course.

A DX lens will only use the centremost portion of a 50mm lens - the portion which distorts least, and gives effectively the same refraction effect as the full width of a 75mm lens, which would be what an FX body would use.

So in short - a 50mm lens on a DX body *is* exactly equivalent to a 75mm lens on a FX body.

Of course, there are some differences in *depth of field* caused by the sensor of the FX being larger, but these are largely irrelevant here, and have nothing to do with distortion.
 
Ive really enjoyed this thread please keep it going I know it started life as What would you buy but it has grown into a really informative thread with no arguements each passing on a point of veiw and experience
Bob
 
I stumbled across this thread on Google, and couldn't resist chucking my hat in the ring. Apologies.

FWIW, my favourite lens for portraits is the Nikon 105mm VR Macro. Autofocus isn't the best, but the VR works OK at distance, and on the DX it approximates the 150mm favoured by fashion photographers, which gives a very flattering appearance, and it has rounded diaphragm blades, so bokeh is great. Trouble is, it's far too long to use indoors most of the time, so for I tend to use my Nikon 50mm f1.4 for the majority of indoor portrait work.

For FX, the 70-200 is commonly thought to be the lens of choice for fashion portraiture, but that's no great secret.
 
SLRist said:
I stumbled across this thread on Google, and couldn't resist chucking my hat in the ring. Apologies.
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Ha, no problem :)

Just so you know what it was if I remember correctly, I didn't know too much about lenses at the time. I was happy with the sharpness of my 50mm, just not wide open. I just seemed to start are gigantic thread :)
 
lukewoodford said:
Ha, no problem :)

Just so you know what it was if I remember correctly, I didn't know too much about lenses at the time. I was happy with the sharpness of my 50mm, just not wide open. I just seemed to start are gigantic thread :)
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And if I may say, I thought that the way in which you responded to the (quite unneccessary, IMHO) "assault" on your desire to improve your image quality by purchasing a new lens, was nothing short of masterful diplomacy, Luke :D!

An object lesson to us all (y).

(I would have lost my rag and gained myself some infraction points, had this been my thread :LOL:)
 
Skimmed over this thread so have only picked up the odd comment but it seems we have a lot of 85mm and 50mm fans.
Thing is, a lot of folk are mentioning very fast apertures like f/1.2 and f/1.4 but is that really going to help you out? Yes, for these really shallow DOF shots then it's fine but what about head and shoulder portraits – there's little benefit from such a narrow DOF except for more flattering skin tones in the DOF drop-off. A good make-up artists is going to help you do that without buying new glass.

For me I like a 70-200mm simply because I don't think you can shoot portraits with just one fixed focal length lens, well, not to get an degree of versatility and variety. Even the 70-200 is limiting. I like shooting long but I also recognise the need to be able to shoot wide and I'd hazard a guess that any portrait photographer worth their salt will never limit their options just for the sake of owning one piece of kit. Surely lighting and rapport with the client is what matters, not whether you've got a top lens - they won't know the difference?
 
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