The Portrait Lens

The Portrait Lens

by William Lulow

To begin with, why do they call it a “portrait” lens? The answer is fairly simple. A portrait lens is a MEDIUM TELEPHOTO. It’s not a big lens which is primarly designed to bring distant objects closer by enlarging them. But when objects are brought close my the magnifying power of a lens, there is some distortion that takes place. Distances are rendered shorter so the objects look bigger, sometimes out of proportion to what they really are. Examples of long telephoto lenses are those in the 200mm to 1200mm range. When I was photographing LPGA golfers in the mid 1980s, I sometimes used a 600mm lens. Most of the time, I used my 200mm f/4 Nikkor lens to get shots like this:

Notice how all the backgrounds are out of focus. That’s what I wanted to do to separate the players from the surroundings. 

The MEDIUM TELEPHOTO is mostly used when one needs to make the human head more in proportion to reality when a portrait or head shot is called for or when one needs to get closer to the subject and throw the background out of focus to concentrate on the subject. These lenses are in the 60mm to 100mm range. Here are a couple of portraits made with my 85mm lens, one that is perfect for this task:

To make sure that facial features are rendered in proportion, I often refer to this chart:

When these three measurements are equal, the face is said to be “in proportion.” Keep in mind that these sizes are made with the camera at the same height as the face and looking straight at it. Distortion will result if the camera is higher or lower. So, if you want to emphasize a person’s forehead or brain say, shoot from a higher angle. If you wish to do the opposite and emphasize the person’s mouth or chin, shoot from a lower angle. This is assuming you are shooting with a lens that adds no distortion. A wide-angle lens will distort the face and a long telephoto lens will be too close and add some distortion as well. 

When I’m shooting in the studio where I make most of my portraits, I don’t want to shoot with a longer telephoto because it puts me too far away from my subject. I prefer to be within whispering range so that I can carry on a conversation with the people I’m shooting. Every once in a while I will use my 135mm f/2 lens for portraits outdoors. The longer lens will throw the background out of focus more which really makes the person stand out. Here are a couple of examples:

Generally speaking though, you want to keep the portrait lens you use in the “short telephoto” range, 70mm to 100mm. Keep in mind that for a normal 35mm size frame, NORMAL lenses are 45mm-55mm. Short telephoto lenses are 70mm-100mm and longer telephoto lenses are 135mm-600mm. When you get to really long telephoto lenses, they are usually used to capture action too far away to get close enough to make good photographs. 

You can use your portrait lens to get “in proportion” images of your subjects, but you can also use it to correct some facial imperfections when a client calls for it or when it makes a difference in how the picture is perceived. A subject may want you to emphasize or de-emphasize certain features. We used to do with with lighting, but now Photoshop has tools we can use to help us get the photographs right. Here is an example of a client who wanted his nose to appear shorter and his face to be narrower:

First, this subject wanted his nose to appear shorter. The solution is to lower the camera angle slightly so that the nose itself is de-emphasized. He then wanted his jowls to be de-emphasized. So the operating principle here is to put things you don’t want shown into the shadow areas so they become less visible. So here, the darker portions of an image don’t stand out as much. They tend to recede. Lighter parts of an image stand out more and become visible. Note here how the side of the face has a bit more shadow. The next thing to do is place the part of the face you want to de-emphasize AWAY from the lens. In this image the jowls are almost invisible. 

The final thing you can do is to make the face seem thinner by using some steps in Photoshop. Changing the image to a SMART OBJECT will allow you to use the LIQUIFY tool to change the face into a part of the image that can be almost molded. Here, the subject’s face looks much thinner than in real life. 

An image can obviously be changed in many ways but when doing portraits, it’s always best to start with a portrait lens that will first render facial features in proportion. That’s the function of the portrait lens.