what distance should you be from subjects for portrait type shots?

[fastHID]

I have read somewhere that your distance to your subject is the important factor, and this is how a lens for head shots should be about 135mm equivalent, and full length shots at 85mm. the point was made it is the distance to subject that is important not the mm specs of the lens.

is this true? if so, what is that magic distance? on a crop sensor DSLR what are good focal lengths to have for people shots? and I don't mean formal, studio portraits, I mean family photos, individuals, couples, small groups. does it make sense to use only a zoom of the appropriate range since family shots seem to always range from 1 person to 3-5 at some event?

also, it seems you can not always be far enough away from subjects, depending on the size of a room. would a 35mm or even a 28mm on a crop sensor be too wide for pleasing shots? how wide an angle lens can you use and not have people look distorted?

 

[Joseph Mama]

Take a look at this picture of 10 different focal lengths:

http://stepheneastwood.com/tutorials/lensdistortion/strippage.htm

It seems that anything past 50mm is probably good. However, like you said, 35mm (or anything really) would work just fine as long as you weren't filling the frame (i.e. step back some) and did some cropping later.

 

[fastHID]

yes, that is a good display of the focal length effect but he varied his distances to subject.

the point I was trying to verify is that if you wish to avoid distortion, distance is a key factor, not just focal length.

 

[nelsonal]

General rules of thumb are be 6-8 feet for adult Caucasians. The most flattering distance varies a bit with each face's shape (babies have fairly flat faces so getting very close can be flattering).

Kept near the center the focal length doesn't matter at the edges of the frame with ultra-wides can induce a different sort of stretch that looks pretty bad (to me at least). Fish eye lenses don't skew faces in the same way near the corners.

 

[ARShutterbug]

Unless you're dealing with a studio situation in which you need to optimize your camera position with respect to the constraints of the room, there's no one answer for which focal length to use or which distance to leave between the camera and the person being photographed. Distance to the person is important when doing candid photography, because the observed presence of the camera can change the mood. Using the lens inside its infinity focusing distance can also improve the background separation.

A good lens to use for group photos is the 24-70 f/2.8. A distortion occurs when using a low-quality lens, and because of the amount of bending of the glass at the ultra-wide distance. This distortion is usually found in any lens with a focal length shorter than 50 mm, and although I prefer the look of the distortion provided by the lens that I chose to use, it can be reduced through software manipulation. Although a lack of corner sharpness can be reduced by cropping the image, the distortions of the lens will remain the same regardless of the amount of cropping. If you need an ultra-wide lens, don't buy a 35 mm lens. It's better to have some image distortion than to have a lens that has the wrong focal length.

 

[beagle1]

fastHID wrote:

I have read somewhere that your distance to your subject is the important factor, and this is how a lens for head shots should be about 135mm equivalent, and full length shots at 85mm. the point was made it is the distance to subject that is important not the mm specs of the lens.

is this true? if so, what is that magic distance? on a crop sensor DSLR what are good focal lengths to have for people shots? and I don't mean formal, studio portraits, I mean family photos, individuals, couples, small groups. does it make sense to use only a zoom of the appropriate range since family shots seem to always range from 1 person to 3-5 at some event?

also, it seems you can not always be far enough away from subjects, depending on the size of a room. would a 35mm or even a 28mm on a crop sensor be too wide for pleasing shots? how wide an angle lens can you use and not have people look distorted?

I try to be at least six (6) feet in distance for portraits

 

[Wally626]

fastHID wrote:

I have read somewhere that your distance to your subject is the important factor, and this is how a lens for head shots should be about 135mm equivalent, and full length shots at 85mm. the point was made it is the distance to subject that is important not the mm specs of the lens.

is this true? if so, what is that magic distance? on a crop sensor DSLR what are good focal lengths to have for people shots? and I don't mean formal, studio portraits, I mean family photos, individuals, couples, small groups. does it make sense to use only a zoom of the appropriate range since family shots seem to always range from 1 person to 3-5 at some event?

also, it seems you can not always be far enough away from subjects, depending on the size of a room. would a 35mm or even a 28mm on a crop sensor be too wide for pleasing shots? how wide an angle lens can you use and not have people look distorted?

Distance reduces the amount of distortion in facial features and other body parts. It is to some extent an artistic issue. In 135 film terms the classic portrait lenses were 85mm, to 135mm. This allowed for you to stand back 6 to 10 ft for head shots and upper body shots. If you are shooting whole body shots then shorter focal lengths will work better unless the space is very open.

If you take the classic portrait lenses and apply the crop factors of 1.5X Nikon, Sony or 1.6X Canon you end up with 53mm to 90mm. Even 135mm on a crop is not too long for head shots and upper body but can be a bit constraining for whole bodies. If you have a typical kit lens you can see how you like the 50mm region and if you need longer you can look into different lenses. although some like the look of very shallow depth of field shots, you do not need to shoot portraits at f/1.2, f/5.6 often is a good F-stop to keep all the important parts of the head in focus, which means normal kit lenses can be used to explore the focal length space until you find a length you like and invest in a more expensive faster prime lens, unless of course you end up liking 50mm, in which case prime is not too pricy.

 

[Gerry Winterbourne]

fastHID wrote:

I have read somewhere that your distance to your subject is the important factor, and this is how a lens for head shots should be about 135mm equivalent, and full length shots at 85mm. the point was made it is the distance to subject that is important not the mm specs of the lens.

Sort of. Perspective depends entirely on the point of view, so moving closer or further back alters perspective. Wherever you stand with your camera, perspective is what it is - you can only alter it by moving. Using a longer FL lens doesn't alter the perspective: all it does is put less of the scene in front of you onto the sensor (or film).

So in principle you can take photos from any distance that the face looks right if you stand there without a camera. In other words, until you get to where your nose is almost touching your subject faces look natural to your eye.

However, there's a snag - our brains are very good at interpreting the image on the retina to what we "know" it ought to look like rather than what it really looks like. (This is the basis of any optical illusion you see). Given a decent frame of reference (our peripheral vision plus perception of distance) our brains compensate for getting close up to someone.

Take away that frame of reference by putting just the FOV of a lens into a photograph and our compensation mechanism stops working. The result is that if we put the camera too close faces can look distorted. Various factors affect the exact distance this happens but it's something like 4 feet; the traditional "rule" about shooting at 6 feet just allows a safety margin.

is this true? if so, what is that magic distance?

Basically, then, any distance from 4 or 5 feet out to as far away as you can get is fine: there really isn't a particular magic distance.

on a crop sensor DSLR what are good focal lengths to have for people shots? and I don't mean formal, studio portraits, I mean family photos, individuals, couples, small groups.

There's a relationship between FOV on the one hand and (FL combined with distance) on the other. As long as your FL isn't so short that it starts to stretch the corners, you can use any FL that gives you the coverage you want.

In a typical room this can be anything from about 28mm (on crop) for full body or groups: this one's at 35mm.

But even 200 (again on crop) can work

does it make sense to use only a zoom of the appropriate range since family shots seem to always range from 1 person to 3-5 at some event?

I think it depends more on how much you want to control DOF. I rarely go wider than f/2.8 so any fast zoom would give that (but I wouldn't want to use a slower zoom); if you want really thin DOF you'd need primes.

also, it seems you can not always be far enough away from subjects, depending on the size of a room. would a 35mm or even a 28mm on a crop sensor be too wide for pleasing shots? how wide an angle lens can you use and not have people look distorted?

Distortion, as in stretched corners, starts to show if you go wider than about 28mm but, as noted above, distance can have just as much effect. And with some effort in PP you can get rid of the worst effects of this distortion if you need to use a shorter FL to fit everyone in.



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Gerry
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First camera 1953, first Pentax 1985, first DSLR 2006

Galleries by Gerry Winterbourne

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