Why is a 35mm considered unflattering?

It's due to the distance you have to be from the subject for portrait.

If you are shooting half-body shots, you'd be standing further back, then 35mm will be perfectly fine. But if you are shooting portrait, you will need to stand closer to the subject, which means the facial features will be more exaggerated.

Short telephoto lens gets you to stand further back, flattening the face. While 35mm is wide-ish angle. Think of it this way, at normal talking distance of 1 meters, you see the person's face as flat. But if you and your OH are cuddled up, the face looks weird, eg. nose sticks out.

You could think about doing environmental portraits. That is shooting the people in context of the environment, for example a teacher standing in front of a blackboard, or a mechanic in the garage.
 
Crop or FF?

There isn't a workaround, there's no such thing as an unflattering lens, just a badly chosen focal length.
On Crop it's a std length lens and makes a great lens for 3/4 or full length portraits, anything closer than that and distortion starts, Note the 'distortion' is a result of the proximity of the subject not the focal length.

On a FF it's a great portrait length for environmental portraiture, and is a traditional favourite of photojournalists.

In short, no matter what camera, it'll take really odd looking H&S portraits.

Hope that helps.
 
I would say no problems with the length. I wouldn't use 35mm for head/shoulder portraits, but for full or 3/4 length 35mm is ace
 
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