f/2.8 to love or hate?

[Abitconfused]

Do you thing an f/2.8 lens has a suitably narrow depth of field for portrait work?

[pnodrog]

What format and what focal length lens?

Provided you have a very plain background or it is far enough away f/2.8 should be fine.

P.S. I am not a portrait photographer.

[Abitconfused]

I am thinking f/2.8 70-200mm here mostly. I see it used a lot for portraits in a studio but how about an urban scene? The Nikon 105 f/1.4 has beautifully narrow DoF.

[Manfred M]

The f/2.8 70 - 200mm lens is the most popular portrait lens turned out by all of the major lens manufacturers. It is great for single subject work. When it comes to fixed lenses, anything between around 80 - 135mm is pretty common in portraiture work. The f/1.4 85mm lenses are in many pro kit bags. If you are looking for outdoor portraiture, anything up to 400mm is preferred because these lenses provide a very flat image and can be shot from a further distance than for indoor work.

Correct answer is; it depends on your own personal preferences. I personal will use a 105 before I go tp an 85. I do a lot of portraiture.

[Stagecoach]

My question would be, do you really want/need the DOF that a f/2.8 lens is going to give for the portrait work you are going to do?

Disregarding that a f/2.8 lens is going to be slightly sharper stopped down a bit.

Here's a chart I made up and used a few years back based on one that Bill posted.

[billtils]

Manfred's "Correct answer is; it depends on your own personal preferences" says pretty well all that needs to be said. Add the informatiion in Grahame's chart and there's only the characteristics of the specific lens in regard to sharpness fall-off when wide open.

[DanK]

All depends on what you want. I don't do posed portraits for the most part, but I do a lot of candid images. f/2.8 is too wide (too little DOF) for me, as Grahame's chart shows. If you are more comfortable in the Imperial system, there are 25.4 mm in an inch. So for a 1/4 view, f/2.8 gives you about 1/4 of the head in focus.

[Manfred M]

One other comment I should add. When I shoot in a studio and do portraits, then I tend to use f/8 or f/11 apertures simply because I can control the background and there is no real advantage to shooting for a shallow DoF.

If I am shooting on location, I will make a creative decision when posing my subject. There are times when the background is an important compositional element, for instance for a environmental portrait that needs to be in focus to tell the story about the subject..

At other times I want to throw the background completely out of focus to ensure that it is not intrusive. Here it is important to note if the selected aperture and resulting DoF are actually working. This is dependent on the background, lens design and aperture. The shallow DoF may not fix a busy background and the photographer has to look for a different place to shoot their subject; at time an out-of-focus background can be more distracting than one that is in focus.

I find that f/2.8 is usually great for my work and an even shallower DoF can cause other problems. In portraiture, the general rule of thumb is that the eyes or at least the eye that is closest to the camera has to be tack sharp. I have seen images where this is the case, but other parts of the head or face can become too distracting, especially in cases where the noticeable out of focus area is in front of the eye.

[rpcrowe]

IF your subject is close and IF your background is at a distance and IF you are shooting with a long focal length; f/2.8 or even smaller apertures can effectively blur the background. This image was shot using a 300mm f/4L lens on an APSC Canon DSLR. Since the dog was fairly close to the camera and the background was a fair distance away from the dog, an f/5.6 aperture at 300mm (480mm equivalent) totally blurred the background...


Here is an image shot with the Sony 70-200nn f/4 lens on a full frame A7iii... 131mm at f/4.0

[pschlute]

Do you thing an f/2.8 lens has a suitably narrow depth of field for portrait work?

Depends how long your subject's nose is.

[William W]

I am thinking f/2.8 70-200mm here mostly. I see it used a lot for portraits in a studio but how about an urban scene? The Nikon 105 f/1.4 has beautifully narrow DoF.

Using 135 Format (aka 'Full Frame'), for Portraiture, in "an urban scene", many Photographers would generally prefer to use a shorter Focal Length: a 35mm fast Prime being (historically) and still today a popular choice.

On a 'full frame' DSLR, a 35/1.4 is often used. I think that the choice of F/1.4 as the maximum aperture is more about light gathering (when necessary if shooting in dark environs) rather than attaining a particularly shallow DoF. The Portraiture Photographers I know, who shoot Urban, Street, Environmental and similar, tend to use their 35/1.4 generally at around F/2.2, if shallow DoF is required.

On the other hand, if you mean that you want to use the 70 to 200/2.8 for portraiture 'in an urban setting', then I think that the choice of that particular lens, that it being F/2.8, by most Portrait Photographers (thinking Pro Wedding Photographers, as one example) is because the Nikon, Sony and Canon variants (I expect other too) are all very fast and very sharp (especially at F/3.5 ~ F/8) and have a compass which sits smack bang in a useful FL range for General Portraiture ranging generally from Full Length to Tight Head, and a Zoom is exceptionally useful when shooting on the hop, and outdoors: i.e. in an UN-controlled setting, unlike a Studio where (as Manfred correctly points out) - he has control of the background.

***

All that stated, the question "does an F/2.8 lens have a suitably narrow depth of field for portrait work?", is, for me at least, a tad difficult to discuss or advise upon without knowing (especially) the camera format being used and the type and purpose of the Portraiture being done. For one example only, if we required a piercing eye in a Tight Head Shot, and I were using an APS-C camera, I'd tend to want a lens much faster than F/2.8, and a FL much shorter than 70mm.

WW

[xpatUSA]

Depends how long your subject's nose is.

Ya beat me to it!

I was brewing up a crack about Cyrano de Bergerac or Pinocchio or even Steve Martin ...

[William W]

Depends how long your subject's nose is.

. . . not if it's a Profile Shot.

[Abitconfused]

Oops!