Lense for Portrait and Studio Photograpy
Bodong
What is the good choice of lense for portrait and studio photography. Can I
use the same lense for both purposes? I don't have an unlimited budget. So
cheap but good lense, that is what i want. Never mind a 3rd party brand.
btw, my camera is Nikon FM2.
Cheers
Lewis Lang
>From: Bodong bod...@ngawur.com
>Date: Sun, Jul 1, 2001 5:06 PM
>Message-id: <9hnhql$pd9$2...@ucsnew1.ncl.ac.uk>
Form cheapest to most expensive:
A used Nikon Series E 75-150mm zoom (a line of well made optically excellent
but more plasticky build but still very well made budget series of lenses from
Nikon manufactured in the late 70's/early eighties to complement their
lower/budget end cameras such as the Nikon EM and FG cameras) is renowned for
its optical quality (and has luscious bokeh) - it is very good for portraiture
because you can use the zoom to crop in camera. They are probably still rather
cheap ($100-150 range - anybody correct me if I'm wrong). There is a rather
cheap 100mm f/2.8 Series E Nikon lens that was made (others can fill you in on
its optical properties because I never owned it). Also renowned as an excellent
portrait lens is the 105mm f/2.5 AIS Nikkor which has great sharpness and one
of the best bokehs (Japaneese word/term for the smoothness or hardness of the
out of focus areas in an image, which are flattering for rendition of out of
focus backgrounds in portaits) of any lens. The old Tamron manual focus 90mm
f/2.5 macro lens also has great bokeh and sharpness. Nikon made a 105 f/4 and
possibly a 105 f/2.8 (I'm not sure) manual focus Nikkor micro (macro-type) that
could be used for extreme close-ups (useful for some types of still life and
beauty detail shots of eyes/lips/etc.). There are also an 85mm f/1.4 and 1.8
(possibly an 85mm f/2 older lens also exists) manual focus lenses if you have a
small studio/shooting space and/or you are fond of this focal length. When I
did fashion I preferred the 135mm f/2.8 Nikkor AIS lens because it allowed me
to do tightly cropped headshots with a flattering perspective because it
allowed me to shoot tight from about 5 feet away. There was/is? also a 135mm
f/2 manual focus AIS Nikkor lens whose aperure allows you to blow out the
background areas even further out of focus due to the large aperture but this
is primarily an advantage outdoors when you can't control background clutter -
in the studio with a featureless paper seemless background the extra stop might
not matter at all except to make your viewfinder a bit brighter and possibly
easier to focus because of the smaller depth of field at f/2. If you get the
135mm f/2.8 then an 85mm lens should supplemet it for looser (waist and torso)
shots. Perhaps the 105 is the optimum compromise if you don't want and/or can't
afford both the 85 and the 135mm single focal length lenses. I believe both the
85 (f/1.4 and 1.8) and the 105 f/2.8 micro lenses are also available in AF
mount (which can be used/metered w/ your manual focus FM2). There are also
105mm and 135mm f/2 DC (defocus control) lenses which allow you to smooth out
either the bokeh of the foreground or the background (but not both). There was
a Nikon f/4.5 80-200mm Nikkor (AI? AIS?) which has/had the reputation of giving
zooms a good name since it was so sharp. The faster 80-200 f/4 Nikkor which
replaced it is also supposed to be a good lens. There was even an 80-200mm
f/2.8 manual focus AIS Nikkor lens available at about the time of the first AF
version of this lens if I remember/guess correctly) but it was a large
sucker... There have been many editions of the 80-200mm f/2.8 AF lens which is
a lot more expensive than the 75-150 Series E lens I mentioned, but I'll let
other more expert Nikonophiles give you the low down on the various versions of
this lens optically/etc.
Look up more info in Yahoo! and at Google's search engine (at www.deja.com) in
the archive for this newsgroup on "Nikon Portrait lens" info sites and
opinions/newsgroup posts on the various lenses listed above. Bjorn has an
excellent website w/ real world tests/opinions on the Nikon lenses he's used.
Also try Photozone, Photodo, Photo.net, Photographyreview, and camerareview for
websites that have lens tests on the Nikkor lenses you're after (try www.
before there names and .com after their names (except for Photo.net) to come up
with their websites and/or find out their websites by typing their names in a
search engine such as Yahoo!, etc.
Also you can ask Anders and Tony (Polson) who among others seem to be Nikon
resident experts.
If you wanted to buy any of the above lenses used a good place to start would
be KEH (www.keh.com)? and if you wanted to buy new try B&H Photo Video in NYC
which has great prices and service for a mail order place (and in person too).
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Lewis
I've set (anti-spam) controls to allow in only people on my list. If you want
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Thanks.
Check out my photos at "LEWISVISION":
David O. Garcia
good condition. It is one of my favorite lens. Although I have the 85mm f
2.0 and a Vivitar 90mm f 2.5 as well.
--
David O. Garcia
Hampton, VA
http://communities.msn.com/davidogarciaphotography