which lens do you use for outdoor/portraits

[ccting]

Originally Posted by Tzetsin

... take your 200mm lens set at f/5.6 and walk away from your subject until you get the desired framing.

will Shooting at 200mm make the portrait look flat? If 85mm is best for portrait for 35mm camera, is that means Tamron 60mm is good for dslr portrait?

Hmmm, anyone wish to comment Tamron 90mm and Tamron 70-200mm for portrait?

[ccting]

Originally Posted by XxkmoorexX

I agree with tzetsin. I use my 55-200mm VR for nearly everything but it produces very sharp portraits outdoors with beautiful bokeh and background blur. The key is to use the largest aperture possible that will allow me to keep both eyes in focus- usually that's about f/4 with the lens I use.

Is the lens practical indoors, too?

[Tzetsin]

Originally Posted by ccting

will Shooting at 200mm make the portrait look flat? If 85mm is best for portrait for 35mm camera, is that means Tamron 60mm is good for dslr portrait?

Hmmm, anyone wish to comment Tamron 90mm and Tamron 70-200mm for portrait?

The reasoning behind the 200mm is to get separation from your subject and its surroundings. Zooming out and setting your aperture as low as your lens can will maximize the depth of field effect separating the subject and creating a sense of depth. Your right though, 200mm lenses, if you have sharpness throughout, will bring backgrounds to the same plane as the forground making an image flat.

[RichardTaylor]

@ccting

You can use almost any lens for portraits, dependant on shooting conditions and lighting, it just means you take a different style of portrait.

[Doug Sundseth]

A 60mm lens makes quite a nice portrait lens on a crop-sensor camera. And Nikon's 60mm macro lenses also work pretty well for macro photography, so you get dual duty if you're shooting Nikon (I don't know what's available for Canon or Sony or others).

[ccting]

Originally Posted by Doug Sundseth

A 60mm lens makes quite a nice portrait lens on a crop-sensor camera. And Nikon's 60mm macro lenses also work pretty well for macro photography, so you get dual duty if you're shooting Nikon (I don't know what's available for Canon or Sony or others).

Hmm. Lets give a scenario for you all to analyze.

I have D5100, kit lens 18-55mm VR, lens converter Micro Macro. I wish to shoot product, portrait, and almost everything. Using Open Close Principle, I wish to buy only 1 lens this year to complement (not replace) my kit lens.

I know that Tamron is not suitable for low-light & time-critical mission because of its slow & noisy autofocus (according to my study based on secondary sources).
Tamron 90mm has problem to autofocus at far object; Tamron 70-200 has better bokeh than Nikon 85mm bokeh king. Dough has suggested Nikon 60mm but I have 55mm with macro lens and it looks redundant in term of focal length.

Tamron 60mm vs 90mm vs Tamron 70-200. Which one do you think fits my needs best? I don't want to use Nikon as photography is just a "toy" for me.

[MindyRaeL]

Originally Posted by ccting

...I know that Tamron is not suitable for low-light & time-critical mission because of its slow & noisy autofocus (according to my study based on secondary sources)....Tamron 90mm has problem to autofocus at far object;...

I have the Tamron 90mm macro, and it auto-focuses perfectly fine, even on far away objects. It's not slow or noisy, and I've used it in plenty of low-light situations. In fact, it's one of my favorite lenses. It's tack sharp and I love the focal length of it.

IMO, when it comes to Tamron, and all third party lenses really, I think performance varies from lens to lens. You can't say that all Tamrons focus slow, or all Sigma's are soft. You have to look at third party lenses on a per lens basis, even down to the mount. The quality of Tamron 70-200 Nikon mount may be different than a Tamron 70-200 Canon mount. I've had a variety of Tamron lenses, and some were great and some, well, not so much.

[danbaileyphoto]

Which lens to use for outdoor portraits? It really depends on what you're trying to say with the photo. I would say that the three lenses I use most for outdoor portrait work are the 85mm, 50mm and 24mm.

I'm actually a big fan of using wide angle lenses for portraits, because they allow you to get in close and still show a fair bit of the environment, which gives the subject a better sense of place in the shot. Here's an example of what I often do with that approach.

Of course, with wide angles, you have to be careful, you don't want to get in too close, or you'll start to see some distortion. Not a good thing when shooting 'gentle subjects' like women and children. Can work as a special effect, though.

That said, I always love the 50mm and 85mm short telephotos for portraits outside. They both let you isolate your subjects against nice soft backgrounds that really make them pop. The 85mm has a little shallower depth of field for this kind of effect and it looks really nice in the way it mildly compresses the features of the human face.

The 50mm up close also has a really shallow depth of field, but you lose that the further away from the subject you're shooting.

Again, there are no hard fast rules, only creativity and your own ideas about how you want your photos to look.