You may have noticed that many seasoned portrait photographers use the same lens for much of their work. Remember, what works for them may not be best for you. If all you want from this article is to be told which lens is the best for portrait photography, I’ll cut right to it: that one lens doesn’t exist! Your perfect portrait lens might be a short telephoto, a fast prime lens, or even a wide-angle zoom. It all comes down to how, where, and who you photograph. The truth is that your best portrait lens might be two or three lenses.
Best Focal Length for Portraits
Choosing a lens based on its focal length is the most obvious place to start. But first, let’s all agree that we’ll talk about focal lengths (measured in mm) for full-frame 35mm cameras. I’ll let you do the crop factor math if you have a Micro Four-Thirds, APS-C, Medium Format, or any other sensor size.
85mm
Ask most portrait photographers what focal length is perfect for portraits, and I suspect most will say somewhere around 85mm. That’s good advice if you’re photographing headshots. Not if you’re photographing full-length fashion photos in a small studio. Before jumping to conclusions, you need to think about what you’re most likely to photograph and where you’ll be working; for example, a Sony FE 85mm f/1.8 lens on location is perfectly usable for full-length portraits.
200mm
To simplify things, I’ll start with studio photography, where the longest focal length you’re ever likely to need is 200mm. This extreme is suitable for tight crops for dramatic effects, actual headshots, and getting maximum compression (because of the lens-to-subject distance, NOT lens focal length).
70-125mm
The 70-135mm range is where most portrait photographers will settle. It keeps you comfortably far from your subject and nicely covers half-length portraits. Meanwhile, 35-70mm is about as wide as you want for full-length portraits; anything wider than that is handy for large group photos or showing your subject’s environment.
400mm
Step outside the studio, and all of the above remains true, but you can also go crazy with a 400mm lens to take a full-length portrait. The compression will be amazing, but you’ll have to back up two blocks to frame your shot!
A good portrait requires excellent communication between you and your subject. The most important focal length consideration has nothing to do with optics.
If you back up too far with a telephoto lens, you’ll be yelling at each other. Move in too close with a wide-angle lens, and you’ll make your subject feel very uncomfortable. So maybe the photographers who said 85mm were right all along!
Aperture for Portraits
A portrait lens’s maximum (widest) aperture is the next thing to decide. Even if you only ever work at f/8.0, the wide-open aperture of your lens still matters for a couple of reasons.
Did you know that your lens choice might hinder your camera’s autofocus? Back when everyone had SLR cameras, “fast glass” kept your viewfinder bright thanks to the lens’s wide-open aperture, letting in lots of light. Now that we’ve mostly moved to mirrorless cameras, that effect is hidden but not gone.
Although we can’t see it, a bright image projected onto the camera’s sensor is good. The brighter the image, the better your camera’s autofocus will work. This improvement might be reason enough for portrait photographers who work in a studio to choose one lens over another.
You’ll first notice the price tag before you even own a new lens. Lenses with small F numbers cost more than the same focal length lens with a slightly less impressive F number. For example, the Olympus 45mm f/1.2 vs the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 has a $1000 price jump! Of course, there is a reason for this, and you’ll understand why when you hold fast glass in your hand. They can be surprisingly big!
An f/1.2 lens on a full-frame camera needs a lot of glass; look at the Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L. But wide aperture lenses offer real-world advantages, such as their ability to keep you working in dim ambient light conditions or make portraits with a wafer-thin depth of field. If you don’t need that feature, consider an f/2.8 lens or a slower zoom such as the Sigma 24-105mm f/4.0 ART Lens.
Prime vs. Zoom Lens
Prime lenses and portraits have always worked well together. Fixed focal length (prime) lenses offer the best optical quality. They are often smaller, faster, and cheaper than an equivalent zoom lens. So, if you’re a portrait photographer, you’ll want a prime lens. Well, hold on a moment; zoom lenses have their merits, too. In the battle of prime vs zoom lenses, there are benefits to both.
The apparent advantage of a zoom lens is that one lens can cover the focal length of several prime lenses. The zoom might be larger than a prime, but bringing one zoom lens to a portrait session is often preferable to three prime lenses—no more switching lenses during your portrait session.
But what you gain in focal length flexibility, you lose in aperture. Zoom lenses will cover the f/5.6 – f/16 aperture range just fine, but finding a zoom lens that goes wider than f/2.8 is very hard.
Do you need an f/1.2 aperture for portraits in very dim light? You need a prime lens. Need a super shallow depth of field? An f/1.4 prime has you covered. Need a low-cost lens for portraits in low(ish) light and with a shallow(ish) depth of field? The classic 50mm f/1.8 prime lens is for you.
Other Features to Consider
Aside from focal length and aperture, some features might sway you toward your perfect portrait lens.
Bokeh
If you’re after that beautiful round-shaped bokeh, working wide open is the place to be. Stop the lens down; that round shape can become a less attractive hexagon on some lenses. You need a lens with many aperture blades, such as the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM Lens. With 11 aperture blades, the bokeh blur remains reasonably round even as you stop down.
In-body Image Stabilization
In body image stabilization, or IBIS for short, is one of the most impressive innovations in recent years. Even if your camera doesn’t have it, your lens can. It could be called VC (vibration control), OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), or, in the case of the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L, it’s called IS. Some camera bodies and lenses can also work together for extra image stabilization, such as the OM SYSTEM OM-1 and the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO.
Autofocus
As previously mentioned, your lens choice can slightly impact the autofocus on your camera. Even in perfect conditions, there will be times when you need manual focus. Nothing breaks up the flow of a portrait session like having to stop and dive into the camera’s menu system to find the AF/MF controls. If you have to do this regularly, look for a lens with a physical AF/MF switch. And for good measure, a lens with a large manual focus ring is a real bonus.
Custom Function Buttons
While we’re on the subject of buttons, portrait photographers are the perfect people to benefit from using a lens with a custom function button. A photographer can program the lens function button to do many handy things. For example: Need a one-touch white balance button? No problem. Would you like to use a moody mono preset? A custom button can do that. Need more than one custom button on your lens? Check out the Nikon NIKKOR Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S lens
Conclusion
As I promised at the start, the perfect portrait lens doesn’t exist. Instead, many portrait photographers choose to cover wide, medium, and long focal lengths with two, three, or more lenses. Although zooms are best for flexibility, you’ll find many portrait photographers (including myself) who overlap their zoom lens with a fast prime. You can’t have too many lenses!
