Ronny, I hope the OP forgives me for posting pictures in his thread without permission.

Here is an example of what I was talking about.

Both of these pictures were taken, seconds apart, with a tripod mounted Sony A77. White balance and color balance was set prior to taking the pictures.

The first image was taken with the Minolta 50mm f/1.7 and the second with the Sony 50mm f/1.8 lens. There was NO post processing done; these are JPEGs straight out of camera*. If you look carefully, you will see a difference in the color rendition. The Minolta gives a warmer, richer cast to the image, while the Sony has slightly better resolution, but is cooler and more sterile.

Make sure you check the download. ENJOY!

*The original files were too large to upload so I reduced them in Lightroom to 600 X 800 and 200KB size. NO other image manipulation was done.

The issue with a portrait lens is this: longer lenses all you to fill the frame and stand back farther from the subject and thus avoid "stretching" the features...i.e. the nose looking longer..the ears looking like they are on the back/far side of the head..etc.

You will fill the frame with your subject, (for example a head/shoulders shot) and to get the right framing, you'd need about an 85mm lens.

It depends a bit on what camera you have...if you have a cropped sensor camera you naturally stand a few more feet back to get the same framing.

So...to get the most pleasing facial compression of features....this is sort of the guide/rule of thumb:

50mm
Nothing closer than full length

85mm
Head/chest

135mm
Head/shoulders

200mm
Tight head shot.


I know that people will say that they take fine head shots with a 50mm but....I disagree. I've done that and then went back and looked at them side by side with a longer focal length and was shocked at the (now noticeable) distortion.

This set of images illustrates what you get with each lens choice.