The Canon Magazine 105
85mm PORTRAIT LENSES
85mm PORTRAIT
LENSES
Especially on a full-frame body, fast 85mm
prime lenses are perfect for portraiture. But
some are slightly more perfect than others...
hink portraiture and you’re probably
thinking 85mm prime. And you’d be
absolutely right. It’s simply the ideal
tool for the job. Mounted on a full-
frame body, the focal length gives a
flattering perspective and enables a
comfortable working distance, so you’re not
crowding your subject and invading their
personal space, but still close enough to be
engaged and give direction. Even if you’re
shooting with an APS-C format body, an
85mm lens works brilliantly for tight head
shots or head-and-shoulders portraiture.
Naturally, one of the key attractions of
a prime lens is that you can expect ace
sharpness and low levels of distortion. That’s
certainly the case with the vast majority of
85mm lenses, but blur is equally important.
A main facet of ‘fast’ 85mm lenses is that
the telephoto focal length and wide aperture
enable a tight depth of field, so you can throw
distracting backgrounds out of focus and
really make the main subject stand out.
Some 85mm lenses go wider than others,
most budget-friendly options having an f/1.8
rating. For head-and-shoulders and even
half-length portraits, the depth of field is tight
enough to blur somebody’s ears when their
eyes are in focus. Moving up to an f/1.4, the
depth of field becomes tighter and you’ll often
find that only one eye is sharp in a portrait, if
the face is slanted to the camera. For
big-spenders, Canon offers f/1.2 lenses for its
DSLRs and mirrorless EOS R-series bodies,
which can deliver an ultra-tight depth of field.