billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

70-200 2.8 is my all time favorite portrait lens.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

On a T4i I like the 50mm, or at the max my Sigma 17-70 at 70mm, for portraits, have gone as short as my Canon 40mm too.

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

You can also go on Flicker and search for photos shot with a particular body and lens combination to see what is possible...

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

It occurred to me, long after I made the previous suggestions, Phyllis … you might want to take a look at a few of the Canon Macro lenses. The obvious choice is the 60 f2.8 Macro - which will give you just about 90mm field of view on the EOS 70D. Or, you could consider the Tamron one, which is slightly faster at f2. Then, there's TWO Canon 100mm Macros - the f2.8 USM, and the 100L f2.8 IS USM - which is only about $200 more than the one w/o stabilization. Then, there's the superb Sigma EX 105 OS HSM Macro - which you can currently pick up UNDER $600 - another EXCELLENT Portrait Lens … Good Luck with your pick!

Afterthought: Sigma has just RE-introduced their fabulous 70mm f2.8 Macro. Another lens you might want to consider. Being a Prime, it's a little less expensive, than equivalent focal range zoom lenses.

Weddingguy Loc: British Columbia - Canada

Firstly let me say that which camera you have is not a consideration, other than that the 70D is a crop factored camera.

The ideal focal length for closer-in portraits, (from waist up to head shots) on a crop factored camera, especially indoors in an average home, would be from 50 to 70 mm. Below 50mm will create unwanted distortion . . above 70mm will be over compressed and too limiting for indoor portraiture.

Contrary to popular suggestions, a prime lens is not ideal. More attention will be directed to properly cropping the subject and filling the frame for maximum quality, than in getting and keeping the attention of the subject. This consideration is more important than ever when dealing with children.

You have not mentioned the kind of lighting that you have in your home "studio", and that could be a determining factor in the importance of the maximum aperture of your lens choice.

Although I have used a multitude of lenses for shooting portraits, and most with great success . . . here is what should help you decide which is ideal for you . . .

Personally, my go to lens for children's portraits around home is the Canon 24-70 F/2.8L . . . here is why . . .

1) A lens that has a constant aperture throughout the zoom range will avoid variances in exposure from zooming.

2) I would not be using a lens wide open for children because I need the extra DOF to allow for subject movement. Far more important to have tack sharp eyes than the "bokeh" or OOF background praised by many amateurs. In some cases their goals to have an OOF background precede learning to take a sharp image.

3) A fast lens, F/2.8 or better, even when shooting at an ideal F/5.6 to F/8, will focus faster and more accurately because the camera does those functions at the len's widest aperture

4) Changing from a close-in head shot to a half or 3/4 crop portrait should not take the photographer's attention away from the subject. That's how you miss that "magic moment".

5) A lens longer that 70mm will really limit it's use in an average home with space and distance restrictions . . . plus you could force yourself to be too far from the subject to communicate effectively.

6) Take a look at the last 20-30 pictures of your grandchildren you have taken at home and see what focal length was used for all your favorites . . . then get a lens that covers that range. That should be your ideal focal range for your circumstances.

7) The 24-70 F/2.8 is the only lens I use in my home to photograph my 15 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren. (Thankfully, not all at the same time! )

Hope that helps . . .

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The traditional ideal portrait lens for the Canon APS-C format ("crop factor" 1.62) is either a 50mm (as fast as you can afford), or an 85mm (again, as fast as you can afford. Those provide angles of view similar to 80 and 135mm lenses on a full frame camera.

I worked for a school portrait company for years. We used Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 zoom lenses set at around 60 to 65mm for MILLIONS of school portraits. We were using a four strobe portable studio setup, though. If I were doing available light portraits, I want something faster, and that's not going to be a zoom.

Traditionally, the 50mm on APS-C is good for two-people portraits, or compositions that include most of a person's torso. The 85mm lens on APS-C is better for a tight head — or head and shoulders — composition. MOST portraits are made with 1.5X to 4X magnification. The higher the magnification, the farther you have to move back from the subject. The farther you move back for a given composition, the flatter the facial features become. (Focal length determines magnification. Distance controls perspective.)

You can break that rule, however, and use a wide angle lens for a very intimate view of a face. It's a technique sometimes used (carefully) by cinematographers.

allenfr

Oh, I really agree. My all-time favorite walking about lens is the 135 F2.

rcarol

I agree. The 50mm f:1.8 can be had new for about $125 and is very sharp. On the 70D it will have a FOV equivalent to an 80mm lens on a FF camera.

dick ranez

Since you already have an 18-135 lens, you already have everything you need to make a decision. If you can't find one of your grandchildren to help, find a solid object - a lamp base, a statue, a basketball, a book cover, whatever - and prop it up on a stool in your studio. Set your camera on a tripod and take a picture at 24,35,50,85,105 and 135. Move your tripod up or back and repeat the process. Which one do you like? Now that you've determined the focal length, you can examine prime lens options. Low budget options for your camera would be the 40-f2.8, the 50-f1.8 and the 85-f1.8. A bit more "spendy" would be the 35-f1.4, the 50-f1.4 or 50-f1.2 and the 85-f1.4. Price ranges from $150-$1500 or so depending on your choice. Personally I would consider the 50-f1.8 and spending a bit on lighting options, a few stands, speedlites and umbrellas to give your portraits a more professional look. (By the way, playing with the lights is also a lot of fun.) Whatever you choose, remember it's the photographer that counts not his/her toys.

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

Phyllis, a "fast" lens is one with a large aperture, allowing you to use a lower ISO or a little faster shutter speed. It has no advantages in shooting kids or puppies - that all depends on your reaction time, between seeing the kid in the viewfinder and pushing the shutter release, not the lens. I raise dogs, so I know what you are experiencing. What you need to do with kids is use continuous burst of 5 or 6 frames to catch maybe one good shot. With film cameras this used to be very expensive, but now, with digital, you just have to use your delete button a lot.

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

Not on my face, Bud! Wide angle noses is not anything a woman will tolerate - on herself OR her kids!

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

A 50 mm on a crop camera IS a portrait lens - equivalent in Canon to 80 mm in FF. You would have to go below 35mm in order to have wide angle distortion (35 would be considered "normal" perspective, equivalent to 56 mm.) She already has a zoom lens covering the portrait range. And for catching fast moving young things, a zoom is more useful than a prime.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

For general portraiture, on an APS-C camera like Canon 70D a 50mm to 85mm lens might be ideal. The shorter 50mm focal length is good for indoors when you have limited working space... While the 85mm allows you to stand a bit farther away, perhaps for more candid style shots. "Fast" lenses are those with large apertures such as f/2, f/1.8, f/1.4 or even f/1.2. It does not refer to the lens' focusing speed, although that can be important too for some portraiture (particularly kids or pets that are in constant motion!).

The reason short telephotos are used for portraiture has to do with perspective... with the way the lens renders the various components of a person's face, in relation to each otehr. A "normal to wide" lens (30m or shorter focal lengths) will tend to exaggerate, more-so the closer you are to the subject. Too close and too wide will make people's noses look unusually large (the part of their face that's closest to the camera), while making their ears appear oddly small (a more distant part of their face).

Longer focal lengths do the opposite. It's more subtle, but a lens 100mm or longer (on APS-C) can cause a portrait to look compressed or "flattened". This isn't necessarily a bad thing and is even used deliberately with some types of portraiture. For example, fashion photographers often use longer focal lengths... but to do so they need either a large studio or plenty of working space on location.

The reason large apertures are desirable is to be able to blur down the background (and sometimes foreground), while keeping the subject sharp, to make them really stand out. The ability to blur down a background also can be useful eliminating distracting objects behind subjects, such as when on location where you have limited control. (In a studio, you often can simply change the backdrop.)

Some recommended portrait lenses for use on Canon 70D:

- Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM... Reasonably affordable at around $329 and with large enough aperture to introduce a fairly strong background blur effect, along with mid-grade quality build and fast USM focus drive. This lens isn't at it's best "wide open" at f/1.4, but that can actually be useful for portraiture... or it sharpens quite nicely stopped down slightly to f/2 or f/2.2. A cheaper alternative is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM which is more lightly built, 2/3 stop slower so not able to blur as strongly, and STM focus drive isn't as fast as USM... Or a considerably more expensive option is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM which has premium build, incredible ability to blur down backgrounds for an especially "dreamy" look, but is a bit challenging to work with because it can render such shallow depth of field.

Image below was made with Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens (on Canon 30D)...


- Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM... Another reasonably affordable lens ($350) with a fairly large aperture, mid-grade build quality and fast USM focus. Works great wide open or stopped down. A more expensive, premium option is the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM (image stabilized). Or... even more pricey, premium and able to render extremely soft backgrounds... there is the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L USM II.

This was shot with the EF 85mm f/1.8 (on Canon 30D)...


You mention grandchildren... Kids and pets can present added challenges. With them, good photo opportunities can be very fleeting and a zoom lens can be helpful. The problem is that fast (large aperture) zooms tend to be big, heavy and expensive. When I need the versatility, I use several different zooms:

- Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM... A popular lens among wedding photographers, I like it a lot for other types of portraits, especially on an APS-C camera like your 70D. To me, it seems to come up a bit short for portraiture on a full frame cameras. The current "II" version will set you back $1600 and is a superb lens. But the first version (which is what I've used for years) is no slouch and can be found used for quite a bit less. It may need a "tune up", though. The original version seem to get out of calibration over time, with use and wear & tear. I've never needed to have mine tuned up... but other people have reported needed to do so.

This was shot with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L (at 58mm and f/11, on Canon 30D, with studio lighting gear)...


- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM or EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM... can be useful for outdoor shooting, in particular, where you might need the longer focal length at times, for more distant subjects. There have been a number of versions of these lenses, all of which are quite good. There are also less expensive versions without IS (Image Stabilization). Prices range from around $600 to $2000.

This image was taken with Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM (at 93mm and f/4, on Canon 7D)...


And this was done with Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM (at 200mm and f/5.6, on Canon 7D)...


So long as lighting is good, there are lots of lower cost alternatives that can work very well for portraiture, such as...

- Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM... I know several pros who use this lens, which dates from the days of film and was recently discontinued.... but can be found used for $200 or less. It was sold as the kit lens with many cameras and offered for more than 20 years, so there are a lot of them around. It's build quality isn't top drawer, but it's image quality and overall performance rivals that of several lenses that cost many times more. I've used four or five different copies of this lens over the years... especially when I will be hiking some distance with my gear and want to lighten my load.

I used the EF 28-135mm IS USM lens to take this shot (at 117mm and f/7.1 on Canon 7D)...


Frankly, your Canon EF-S 18-135mm IS lens can do very similar work. How well it does sort of depends upon which version of that lens you've got. There have been three different ones, all of which are image stabilized (IS). The original (not "STM" nor "USM") was okay.... pretty good, but not great. The "STM" with faster "stepper motor" focus drive also got a new optical formula that visibly improved image quality. The latest and greatest of them is the "USM" or "ultrasonic focus motor" has 2X to 4X faster focus than the STM, but uses the same optical formula for identical image quality. The key to these 28-135 and 18-135 lenses is good light... they all have relatively slow variable apertures: f/3.5-5.6. It can be ambient light, flash or studio strobes... They just aren't "low light" lenses and their apertures allow somewhat limited blurring of backgrounds.

There are third party lenses similar to many of the above. For example, Tamron offers 45mm f/1.8 and 85mm f/1.8, both with "VC" image stabilzation. They also offer 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8 zooms. They also have 60mm f/2 and 90mm f/2.8 macro lenses that can serve for portraiture (models without USD focus drive are a bit slower focusing). Sigma offers premium 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4 lenses... as well as 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8 and a 70mm f/2.8 macro lens. Tokina offers a 24-70mm f/2.8 and just recently introduced a premium 50mm f/1.4 for use on Canon cameras. There are many others.

Also, while the above are some recommendations.... there are situations where most any lens can be used for portraiture.

A "normal" to wide lens might be needed for environmental portraits (that show a lot of a person's surroundings) or for a group shot.

For example, this was done with 24-70mm f/2.8 at 30mm focal length (on :


Longer focal lengths can work too. For example...

....300mm:


Or even 700mm!


Above I mention getting too close with too short a lens and how it exaggerates features. Even that can be used at times... perhaps humorously. The pic below was shot that way deliberately, making a curious horse's nose look big and it's eyes and ears seem small. The lens used was the same 24-70mm mentioned above, at 66mm on full frame camera, which is equiv. to approx. 42mm on an APS-C camera like 70D. What caused the somewhat disproportionate effect here was working close to the subject. If I'd backed off a bit, the horse's features would look more "normal":



All the above examples except for this last one were done using the lenses on cameras with the same sensor format as your 70D. (Different focal lengths would be used for so-called "full frame" cameras with larger sensors, or with so-called Micro 4/3 cameras with smaller sensors.)

Personally I'm not a big fan of using macro lenses for portraiture. They can be "too sharp".... especially for feminine portraits (your mother-in-law might not like having her every little flaw recorded in high resolution!). Also, macro lenses tend to be slower focusing... even when they use higher performance types of focus drives. That's because they're designed to emphasize accuracy over speed (high magnification often means extremely shallow depth of field, which calls for very precise focusing). I do make an exception, though... with a Tamron 60mm macro lens. It's an f/2 lens, with a stop larger aperture than most macro lenses. I carry it at times for convenience and to lighten my camera bag... it take the place of three lenses: 50mm, 85mm portrait lenses AND a 100mm macro lens.

DeanS Loc: Capital City area of North Carolina

Don't overlook the Canon EF 100 MM F2.8 Macro. It also does great portrait shots. You may have to step back a bit, but that should not be a major prob.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

First of all, you will need a Canon lens for it's superior AF - both speed and accuracy for moving subjects !

The 85 1.8 is OK. But for what you are wanting, I would use the Canon 100 f2 which is slightly more expensive. The 100 will give you more subject distance and blur the back round easier.

ALL the 70-200's are too expensive and too big !

The 100 macro is also OK- not quite as good for portraits - and costs more - BUT, does have an optional tripod collar !

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