Portrait Photography

Lens

If you want to flatter your subject, you'll probably want to deemphasize his nose. That
means you want to stand at 10 or 15 feet away from him so that his nose isn't significantly
closer to you than the rest of his face. However, at such a large distance from the camera,
filling the frame with just your subject's face will require a high magnification (i.e.,
telephoto) lens. Typical "portrait" lenses are therefore between 90 and 135 millimeters
long (for 35mm cameras). Many professional fashion photographers use 300mm or
600mm lenses, resorting to using a walkie-talkie or bullhorn to communicate with the
model!
At right: South Beach. Miami. Fashion photography capital of the world. Here a yuppie
photographer sneers from the back of his 600/4. He's unhappy at being on the glass
end of a Rollei 6008 and 50mm lens. The model is way down the beachfront and he's
using a radio to communicate with an assistant holding a reflector by the model (in
yellow).
With a Canon or Nikon, most professionals end up using their 70-200/2.8 or 80-200/2.8
zooms as portrait lenses. These 3 lb. monsters aren't very pleasant to handhold, though,
and if you know that you're only going to do portraits, you're better off with a prime lens.
Prime lenses are lighter and give better image quality. Unfortunately, the prime lens in
this range that a serious photographer is most likely to own is the 100 or 105 macro.
These are very high quality optically but difficult to focus precisely since most of the

focusing helical precision is reserved for the macro range. Here are some great portrait
lenses:

Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, $1770 (review) or, if you're on a budget, Canon EF
85mm f/1.8 USM, $380 (review)

Canon EF 100mm f/2 USM, $420 (review)

Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM, $990

Nikon 85mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor, $1230 or Nikon 85mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor, $450

Nikon 105mm f/2.0D AF DC-Nikkor, $1070

Nikon 135mm f/2.0D AF DC-Nikkor, $1270

What if you're using a small-sensor digital SLR, such as any of the Nikons or the Canon
Digital Rebel? In that case, an inexpensive 50/1.8 will function as a very usable portrait
lens, roughly equivalent to the 85/1.8 short portrait lenses that are popular on full-frame
cameras. Note that the background will not be as blurred as it would be with the longer
lens.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, $93 (review) or, if you're feeling rich, Canon EF 50mm
f/1.4 USM, $400 (review)

Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor, $135

There are folks who argue that a portrait should not be clinically sharp. For them, fuzz =
glow and is flattering. Fuzz fans definitely don't like using standard 100mm macro lenses
for portraiture. They'll start with a lower performance lens and add fuzziness with a filter
(e.g., Zeiss Softar or Tiffen SoftFX), a stocking stretched over the lens, or digital postprocessing.

Connoisseurs of soft focus insist that you must have a lens with uncorrected spherical
aberration. You can get spherical aberration either by using a very old camera/lens or by
buying a purpose-built modern soft focus lens. The image at right was taken with a
Canon EF 135mm f/2.8 Soft Focus. The lens starts as a modern prime telephoto lens,
lighter than a zoom, high in contrast, and reasonably high quality, especially stopped
down to f/5.6 or smaller. What is different about this lens is that, with the twist of a ring,
you can vary the softness from none to rather soft. The photo at right is luminous in a
way that is tough to explain and would be difficult to reproduce in Photoshop. Sadly,
Canon has not updated this lens with an ultrasonic motor, which would allow
simultaneous manual and auto focus. If you're only going to own one prime telephoto
lens, the 100/2 USM or 135/2L USM are probably better choices.
As far as doing soft focus in other formats, Rodenstock makes an Imagon lens for 4x5
view cameras. This unusual lens has perforated disks that you slide into the middle of the
lens. Unfortunately, different softness and aperture settings affect the focus, which
requires focussing with the lens stopped down. In medium format, people like the old
Zeiss 150 lens for Hasselblad because it simply isn't all that sharp.

Camera

The standard place to start is a digital single-lens-reflex camera. If you can afford it, a
full-frame digital camera, such as the Canon EOS 5D, is very nice for portraits because
you get less depth of field for a given composition than with a small sensor camera, such
as any of the Nikons or the Canon Digital Rebel.
For a serious challenge to digital SLR quality, start with a Hasselblad and a 150mm lens.
If you have a flotilla of assistants like Annie Liebowitz, you could use the camera she
uses: Mamiya RZ67. If you have a lot of patience, a 4x5 view camera with 270mm lens
isn't a bad option.
How important is the choice of camera? Consider how terrible the pictures were that your
relatives sent you back in the old days, taken with a zoom point and shoot film camera.
The lenses was far too slow at the telephoto end. So the photo was taken at f/10 instead of
f/2.8 and the background was sharp instead of blurry. Due to the slow aperture, Uncle
Alfred had to use the on-camera flash instead of natural light. It was a waste of film.
How much better is life in the digital point and shoot age? Sadly, not much. The lenses
are a little faster than on the old film P&S cameras, but the sensors are so small that the
focal lengths are shorter and the depth of field is about the same, i.e., too great. The
background is sharp when it should be blurry.

Environmental Portrait

Here's a photo from Costa Rica. That's Diane Ewing, consummate horsewoman and
proprietress of Hacienda Bar. Her face would be completely black if a pop from the
built-in flash of the Canon EOS-5 (film) body had not filled in the shadow under her hat.
Canon 20-35/2.8L zoom lens. Fuji Sensia film. Photographer also sitting on horse (tripod
is generally preferable to quadruped).

Note that with environmental portaits, you don't necessarily use a "portrait-length" lens.
In fact, often a wide angle lens of some kind is used, typically closer to 35mm than 20mm
(full-frame/35mm film).
Here are some more examples of photos that might reasonably be called environmental
portraits:

Note: these are from my New York pages and Travels with Samantha.

Capture the spirit

If the photo captures something that you remember about a person, there is no need to
show the whole face clearly. The photo may have a lot of meaning to friends and family
even if it doesn't communicate much to a stranger.

Do you really need the wide aperture?

The photo at left (Dieter) was taken with a
Canon 35-350L zoom lens. The 35-350L slows
down to around f/5.6 at longer focal lengths.
The photo at right (Emma) was taken in
Alaska's Katmai National Park in front of a
background with similar potential for
distraction. Emma was captured on film with a
300/2.8 lens. You can decide for yourself
whether the reduction in background
distraction is worth the cost and weight of a
fast lens.

This was taken on vacation with a Canon S60 point and

shoot digital camera. The small sensors of point and shoot
cameras necessitate very short lenses. Even at wider
apertures, these lenses have way too much depth of field for
portraits and the background will always be distracting.

Is the 70-200/2.8 zoom useful?

Though the big professional zooms are heavy and not as sharp as primes, they encourage
experimentation. At right is a standard portrait from New York, captured down near the
70mm end of the lens. With a quick twist, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens
is capable of producing the image at left (sadly the negative was damaged by the Duggal
lab in New York).

Miscellaneous Images with the 70-200, mostly in uncontrolled environments where the
ability to blur the background by going to 200/2.8 was essential....

6x6: Give your subjects some room

The rectangular format of most cameras encourages photographers to crop rather tightly
around a subject's face or torso. The 6x6 cm square format encourages you to give
subjects a little bit of space.
George on the carpeted floor of an office
building. Hand-held, Tri-X film. It seemed
like a good idea to crop out some of the
carpet with Adobe Photoshop. After all, this
is supposed to be a photo of the dog, not of
commercial carpet. As the cropping tool
was being adjusted, an an art director from
Hearst Magazines walked by. He grabbed
me by the shoulders and shook until I
became convinced that it was the space in
front of the dog that made the photo work.

Roommates. Sadly marred by a technical

flaw: the reflector edge in the lower left
corner of the frame.

Reading. From Cape Cod. This was taken

with the 80mm lens, a normal focal length
for 6x6. If you're not trying to fill the frame
with the subject's face, you don't need a
telephoto lens to avoid an unflattering
perspective. In medium format, this can
result in big savings. A telephoto lens for a
Hasselblad or Rollei 6000 is about $4000!

Generation Gap.

Family Pictures

My grandfather Nick Gittes

Cousin Douglas and wife Leslie at Harry and Katerina's wedding.

Fuji NPH low-contrast wedding film, Canon EOS-3, 28-70/2.8L
lens

Pictures that I'm too lazy to write about

(but that might give you a good idea)

If you're still using film...

Most people probably look better in black and white. If you want the sharpest results,
you'll get them with Agfapan 25, Kodak TMAX-100, and Kodak BW400CN. Kodak's
ancient TRI-X emulsion has enough grain that it may flatter certain subjects. You will
probably find that TRI-X in the 35mm format yields grain that is simply too obtrusive.
TRI-X works very well in 120 or 4x5 size, however.
If you're doing color, you'll want subtle tones, low color saturation, and low-ish contrast.
Good places to start in the color negative world are the Kodak Portra films, Fujicolor Pro
160S, and Fujicolor Pro 400H. For color slides, try Fuji Astia or Kodak E100.

See my film article for more on this subject.

Stealing a Location
What if you don't have a big open space with diffuse light and a neutral background?
Steal one. If you live in the United States, a vast open space with light pouring in from
expensive skylights is as close as your nearest art museum or university. With a 200mm
lens set to f/2.8, the background will be thrown out of focus. Here are some examples
from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a couple of lobbies at MIT, taken on a cold
February day in Boston. Canon EOS-5D, 70-200/2.8 IS lens, handheld without flash.

Lighting

The most flattering light for most portraits is soft and off-camera. A large north-facing
window works, as does the electronic equivalent, the softbox (light bank). The Elsa
Dorfman Polaroid photo at the top right was taken with two large light banks, one on
either side of the camera. Note that there are essentially no shadows.

If your subject is outdoors, an overcast day is best. If the day is sunny, make sure to use a
reflector or electronic flash to fill in shadows underneath the eyes.
At right: In a New York loft, light coming from a bank of windows at left. Canon 70200/2.8 lens on tripod. Possibly some fill-flash. Fuji ISO 400 color negative film.
More: the Light chapter of Making Photogaphs.

What if you're in
Mexico, the sun is
strong, the longest
lens that you have is a
50/1.4, and you meet
someone who needs a
portrait for her Web
page? The results will
not be happy (left). On
the other hand, if
you're photographing
people for whom
bright mountain sun is
their natural
environment, the
portrait can be
acceptable (right;
Olympus E1, 14-54/3.5
zoom at f/7.1 and
37mm (74mm
equiv.)).