What kind of lenses should I have for shooting people?
I'm going to school for photography, and I am looking to expand my lens collection. I want to buy high quality lenses for the ones I will use most. My favorite subject is people. This includes portraits, candids, street, studio setups, indoor, outdoor, and low light shooting.
Don't worry about giving me a brand, I can find that on my own, I just need help with the focal lengths I should be looking for. I keep getting mixed opinions, some say 50mm, some say 80mm, I've been told it depends on if I'm shooting full frame or not (currently I'm not, but I plan on switching eventually) Some say 100mm is great, some say it's a bit cropped. Some say 35-50 is great for street. I personally love the depth of a wide angle, but tend to shy away from that when shooting people.
Now I know it all depends on what I plan to shoot with it, so if you could, answer with not only focal length, but also what it is best for, and why you think that.
Wide angle when used close to the subject will distort features, long noses and chins being the norm. A 50mm is about as wide as would want to go, sometimes the distortion from a super wide or even fish-eye can give interesting if not flattering results.
My favourite lens for portraits is my 70 - 200mm f2.8, but you need a large studio to do full length portraits with it.
For low light wide apertures (50mm f1.4) are very handy, but when used wide the depth of field will be shallow and the lens will not be at it's best for image quality. The shallow DOF is very useful for throwing the background out of focus in 'selective focus' shots. Having a 'Nifty Fifty' in your bag is very useful.
Chris
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