Portrait Lens with decent background blur

bobiscuit

bobiscuit

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I bought a cheap M42 Helios-44-2 on eBay - 58mm F/2 and supposedly a USSR copy of some Carl Zeiss or other. It's great! Very sharp wide open and nice bokeh effect.

But, I find that to get the background blur I'm after, I need to be fairly close to the subject. And then I can't fit a head in the frame. If I move back far enough to get head & shoulders and a bit of background, the background blur isn't really pronounced enough.

So what would be a good size/speed? There are 50mm F/1.8 lenses available cheap enough - would that make enough of a difference? Or do I need a shorter length? Or a longer one and stand further back?
 
Would it be an option to get the subject further away from the background? As that would also help to blur the background more? Do a search on here for 'nifty fifty' and you'll find plenty of threads, see if any of those show the effect you're after!

Chris
 
wouldnt it work by just moving you and the subject further away from the background? " f/2 it would be a struggle getting the tip of the nose to the top of the head in focus @ 50mm so i cant understand why the background isnt creamy unless the subject was almost leaning on it
 
beat me to it chris :)
 
Longer lens will help to a point as the FoV will reduce the amount of background - it's not any more blurred but as there's less it appears to be.

The other option is to have greater distance between subject and background.
 
^^^ agree with pxl8. The effect you want is usually a combination of a narrow field of view, and low f/number.
 
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