Portrait photography tip: Use a telephoto lens
Thursday 6 February 2020, 15:15 by Elja Trum | 6,829 views | 0 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
You can take portraits with any lens, but your subject often looks best when you shoot somewhere between 70 and 135mm.
The more telephoto a lens is, the more compressed the image in the photo becomes. This compression is flattering for your subject, as it makes them look slightly slimmer.
Don't go too far, though, as it won't make the portrait look better. A portrait at 200mm is roughly the maximum and may already be too much. Traditionally, 85mm is considered the ideal focal length for a portrait lens.
Another advantage is that a telephoto lens gives you a shallower depth of field in your photo. The background quickly becomes more blurred, which always looks pleasing in a portrait.
About the author
Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.
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Elja Trum
Photofacts; everything to do with photography!
Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about PhotofactsPhotofacts is made possible in part by
