Sony's 100mm macro??

[MFS]

What about the good old Beercan Minolta 70-210/4. ? F4 troughout the whole range and a wide range at 70 close at Portraiture distance. Seems like the Beeran does well on the A900. Perhaps a little soft wide open but as I understood that should not be a problem.

[01af]

What about the good old 'Beercan' Minolta AF 70-210/4? F/4 troughout the whole range and a wide range at 70 mm close at portraiture distance. Seems like the Beercan does well on the A900. Perhaps a little soft wide open but as I understood that should not be a problem.

The Minolta AF 70-210 mm 1:4 is a wonderful portrait lens indeed. The minimum focusing distance is 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in). At 70 mm, this can be a bit long at times, but at 90 - 120 mm it's perfect. The only drawback may be the lens' physical size. Some people feel uncomfortable when being wielded at with such a big apparatus at a fairly short distance.

Also the standard zoom lenses AF 28-85, AF 24-85, AF 28-105, and AF 24-105 (D) are fine for portraiture. So are 50 mm lenses on tele converters (1.4× for APS-C; 2× for full-frame 35-mm). The AF 35-105 and AF 28-135 are not, due to their minimum focusing distance of 1.5 m (5 ft) which is too long for many portrait shots. Also the AF Apo 80-200 G is not very useful for portraiture due to the long minimum focusing distance of 1.8 m (6 ft). Standard zoom lenses with a long end of 70 mm or 75 mm are too short for portraiture on full-frame 35-mm format (but fine on APS-C format).

Generally, a portrait lens should have a focal length of 85 - 135 mm for full-frame 35-mm format or 55 - 90 mm for APS-C, and a minimum focus distance of approx. 1 m or thereabouts. The lens speed shouldn't be much lower than f/4 or f/4.5. Faster lenses are nice to have ... but contrary to common belief, apertures of f/1.4 or f/2 are not very useful for portraiture. Selective focus is nice but you can overdo it---at f/1.4, depth-of-field simply is too narrow for a good portrait shot.

-- Olaf

[MFS]

Another beauty is the pocket rocket aka Minolta AF 135/f2.8. Minimum FD is 1 meter so pretty close to the subject and not so intimidating due it's tiny size. Just a great lens. If you ask me one of the best non G Minolta lenses. Another story will be the Minolta or Sony 70-200 SSM. A great lens, minimum FD 1.2 meters, so very close to subject is possible. But then again a large lens whit a pro look (and pro qualities). Of course, for every adviced lens it means it have too be in the bag. I quess the 85mm f1.4 would be the best choise. I'm saving up for one (or the Sony 135mm f/1.8 ZA perhaps, ouch).

[GaryMulcahey]

Generally, a portrait lens should have a focal length of 85 - 135 mm for full-frame 35-mm format or 55 - 90 mm for APS-C, and a minimum focus distance of approx. 1 m or thereabouts. The lens speed shouldn't be much lower than f/4 or f/4.5. Faster lenses are nice to have ... but contrary to common belief, apertures of f/1.4 or f/2 are not very useful for portraiture. Selective focus is nice but you can overdo it---at f/1.4, depth-of-field simply is too narrow for a good portrait shot.

-- Olaf

Olaf,
When it comes to lenses I will have to respectfully disagree with most of what was said in the above paragraph. Shooting everything by the book, in which case the book becomes as boring as the photographs taken by those means, your images become ordinary and your photography forgettable.
Any lens and I mean any lens can take a great portrait. There are no rules or there shouldn't be. I've spent my life photographing people and many of them portraits. I've use all formats from 4x5 to 35mm and I've used wide angle to long lenses at the full range of f-stops with success. If you continue to put photography into a box of rules, you will stunt the growth of your creativity.
Use the lens that suits what you are trying to achieve and think outside the box of rules. Things are interesting out there.

G

[pakodominguez]

Shooting everything by the book, in which case the book becomes as boring as the photographs taken by those means, your images become ordinary and your photography forgettable.

In order to break the rules, you have to know the rules...


Regards

[01af]

... I will have to respectfully disagree with most of what was said in the above paragraph. Shooting everything by the book, in which case the book becomes as boring as the photographs taken by those means, your images become ordinary and your photography forgettable.

Huh!? I don't see the connection between this---rather blunt---statement and the paragraph you claimed to disagree with.

Any lens and I mean any lens can take a great portrait.

Sure.

My point is: You don't need a super-fast lens for portraiture. Some folks falsely believe a portrait lens must be f/2 or better just because most current 85 mm short telephoto lenses for 35-mm format are this fast, and because some morons keep telling them that's desperately required for selective focus. And yes, indeed occasionally somebody does create a great portrait at f/1.4 ... or with a super-wide-angle lens ... or with a super-telephoto mirror lens. Still, that's not what the typical, classic portrait lens needs to be. And so far, at f/1.4 more bad than good portraits were made.

In order to break the rules, you have to know the rules ...

Well ... actually any fool can break rules. An increasing number of people refuse to learn the rules because they think they're going to break them eventually anyway. So why learn them in the first place?

You have to know the rules in order to break the right ones at the right time and get extraordinary results regardless.

-- Olaf

[pakodominguez]

In order to break the rules, you have to know the rules ...

Well ... actually any fool can break rules. An increasing number of people refuse to learn the rules because they think they're going to break them eventually anyway. So why learn them in the first place?

You have to know the rules in order to break the right ones at the right time and get extraordinary results regardless.

-- Olaf

If you don't know the rules, you are not breaking anything.

The French constitution has a beautiful pricipal: nul est cense ignore la loi (sorry for the lack of accents) sort of "no one is supposed to ignore the law, so everybody is responsible for their acts. You are breaking things even if you are not totaly aware of that... Susan Sontag's On Photography talk about the "chance" involved during the act of photograph -a non iniciated can get a wonderful image with a P&S. But I don't agree with her.

A big issue with photographers (or self called photographers) is that they ignore where this art/craft come from. The collective is kinda orphan. :-/

Regards

[GaryMulcahey]

LOL!
Olaf you can roll your eyes all you like. I won't argue with you. If you don't get the fact that the lens does not make the portrait then the art of the portrait is lost on you, classic or otherwise. That's OK. Not everybody is suppose to get it. That's why some people take pictures of flowers and landscapes and cheerleaders at sporting events.
That is what makes us all so different.

G

[David Kilpatrick]

I think this argument is pointless. The term 'portrait lens' is used traditionally to describe lenses with a field of view around 15-35 degrees depending on the format, and has a history which goes back to the original Petzval Portrait lens. Petzval's design allowed an aperture of c.f/3.4 when very few lenses were able to achieve this (for daguerreotype portraiture) and did so by being around twice the focal length of a normal daguerreotype lens, and accepting a high level of softening aberrations surrounding a sharp image core (it sharpened up well on stopping down). Larger Petzval lenses were built for the neg-pos processes when these became dominant. The use of these lenses continued into the 20th century, although from c.1900 the Cooke triplet and Tessar derivations allowed normal angles of view with apertures from f/4.5 to f/2.8.

Fast lenses, without necessarily being too long in focal length, were always associated with portraiture. Ernemann's Ernostar 135mm f/1.8 (1920s) was used as a standard lens on the Ihagee quarterplate reflex camera, with its vertical plate orientation and design primarily for studio portraiture. It was also fitted to the very portable Ernamox 6 x 9cm/quarterplate hand camera which was used by Dr Erich Salomon for his photojournalism in low light. The Leica Thambar, designed specifically as a portrait lens with soft focus aperture inserts, was 90mm f2.2 on the 35mm frame. The Rodenstock Imagon was issued in 85mm focal length for 35mm use. SOM Berthiot built a SEMFlex with paired 150mm lenses on 6 x 6cm just for portraiture - etc.

Minolta themselves stuck to a range of focal lengths between 85mm and 135mm for lenses designed or labelled as portrait lenses - the 85mm MC/MD Varisoft, the AF 100mm SF, and the AF 135mm STF.

As for me, I have shot portraits on a wide range of focal lengths and for environmental portraiture find the range from 17 to 28mm very useful. Most of my corporate portraiture in the 1970s-1980s for annual reports and business magazines was done on the 24mm f2.8 Minolta MD. It allows the subjects to be placed in context, and avoids the meaningless big face shot which when placed in an article often looks like vanity on the part of a director/etc.

But the term 'portrait lens' still means something in the 85-135mm range. It is a useful term, as very few 85-105mm lenses are telephotos, and they are not particularly long focus. From 135mm and beyond telephoto construction is used (telephoto does not mean long focus, it is a generic type of lens design just as retrofocus is a type of wide angle lens design). So have a term for slightly long lenses which are not technically telephoto, and may be faster in maximum aperture than normal, is pretty useful.

Leica also used the term 'alpine' for their 90-105mm lenses (mainly lightweight versions) and referred to 'alpinist' or 'alpine' in literature about the 90mm focal length. This acknowledged that it is one of the best focal lengths for landscape work, especially in hill or mountain country. But that would have been a very odd term to adopt to describe this sort of focal length generally.

David

[Dusty]

Good points, David. I think that many of today's photographers lack an understanding of photographic history. While many may have seen an old view camera, they have no idea of how they actually work, nor the problems faced by early photographers. Poor understanding of optics meant very basic lenses, shutters didn't exist for some time, and the whole wet plate - and latter - processes were anything but easy.

Dusty

[TallPaul]

Can't comment on the macro but I find the 85/1.4 Zeiss exceptional for portraits. Min focus is 85cm I think from memory, but if you just want the face and this is not close enough, if you are using a900 there is plenty of scope to crop and still print large.

I also like portraits with the 70-200 as well if you have one might be worth a try for your particular application.