Ideal focal for portraits

[AcadieLibre]

I have found it depends on what I want from the portrait on what lens I use. I show up the shoot, get a feel for who I am shooing, the environment and what I want to accomplish. Not sure if this was mentioned, but remember if you have a cropped camera you need to take the into consideration for what lens you use and what you buy.

I find I shoot a lot of my portraits with me 70-200 mm 2.8 lens, just find I am more creative with it, and all depends on what you want out of portrait. I do lots of musicians and I try to me creative in my portraits of them. So far no unhappy people and if they like it, their reps want to use it I know I have accomplished what I have set out to do. If I am not happy with it they never see it, they like what I give them, but what is important to me is I like it, if they don't they can hire someone else. Has yet to happen and all my referrals are through those I have already done work for. Experiment as someone else mentioned.

[mindforge]

I only shoot lifestyle portraits or as I like to call them 'active portraits'. I move a lot, can't really use a tripod because I have to get into weird spots sometimes and I just need mobility. I shoot these active portraits and family shots with just two lenses; 18-70mm 4.6 and a 80-200mm 4.6 and they work great. I usually start at about 20 feet away or so and start shooting, moving and getting into my groove and allowing the uncomfortable first minutes of a shoot disappear. As I do, I have to adjust constantly. I find that I am at about 100mm or close most of the time. But then I am at probably 60mm for the entire last half of the shoot.

So if I had to say where I was most the time....

60mm and 100mm about evenly.

[tegan]

I have also done a lot of children shots with a 28mm 2.8 prime. Very sharp and gives me depth of field even when shooting in natural light. I am usually very close and careful of the camera angle to avoid distortion. There is however less distortion with a wide angle prime than a wide angle zoom.

Tegan