Canon 135 F2L - the best wedding portrait lens ?

BAK wrote:

First of all, there's the question of what is a wedding portrait.

A lot of people think THE wedding portrait is a photograph of the bride and groom, standing side by side, showing the train of the bride's dress, at the way up to their heads, including the top of her veil.

The bride probably spent months of time and perhaps thousands of dollars to get that dress for the most important day of her life.

With a so-called full frame camera, a lens in the 35 to 50 mm range would work well.

But another wedding portrait of importance is a horizontal image of the bride and groom standing side by side, extending far enough down that the bride's flowers are in the shot.

With a so-called full frame camera, a lens in the 35 to 50 mm range would work well.

If what we count as a wedding portrait is a group portrait of bride and groom and both sets of parents, a 35mm lens would probably be the best bet.

If our goal for a beautiful wedding portrait is a vertical head and shoulders shot of the bride, her veil, the jewelry around her neck, and a bit of the top of the neckline.

For this, something in the 70 to 100/105 mm range would be a good choice.

And if you are going to take some of these shots in a fairly quick series, you might not be too interested in changing lenses.

If I went back to being a real wedding photographer, I'd want to work with two bodies (probably one crop and one full frame) with a Tamron 24-70 on the crop camera and a 70-200 Tamron on the full frame part of the time, and with the lenses switched some of the time.

It's a conventional, tried, tested and successful formula, and I agree that if working within the 'rules' described above, your choice of bodies/zooms would be very efficient (don't know that I'd choose Tamron though).

But rules are made to be broken, and more and more wedding clients are looking for more personal, intimate and candid records of their event - not only in addition to the more traditional poses, but sometimes instead of those poses. I think 135 becomes a much more useful tool in those situations.