Which Digital Camera Lens For Boudoir Portraits
In Lenses I advised that a cheap 50mm lens could be the single best buy for taking better boudoir photographs. I was recently in a position to test and compare which was the best digital camera lens for my Canon 40D DSLR. Here are the results.
Camera Sensor Size
The first thing I should point out is that this comparison is for Digital SLRs which have a sensor size smaller than 35mm. These include the Canon 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D, 350D, 400D, 450D, 500D and Nikon D40, D6, D70, D80, D90, D5000, D200 and D300. In other words, most of them! This has nothing to do with the megapixel count, but the fact that, being smaller than the 35mm standard, all lenses need to be multiplied to get the 35mm equivalent lens. The multiplier is around 1.6 which means that a 50mm lens is roughly equivalent to an 80mm lens on a 35mm camera, which has long been considered the ideal focal length for portrait photography.
This is a real plus point for small sensor cameras because there are so many high quality, inexpensive 50mm lenses on the market.
Prime vs Zoom
The next thing to note is that I am comparing two zoom lenses here with a fixed focal length "prime" lens. In general a prime lens will give better than a standard zoom lens - after all it has a much simpler job to do.
Crops
The following three pictures are zoomed in 100% on three pictures taken using the different lenses within a few minutes of each other - so the lighting conditions are broadly the same for each.
ISO400 was used to allow hand held shooting without any additional flash lighting, and the Image Stabilization function was switched off on the EFS lens.
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Conclusions
In the results above (and in other tests that I have done) I found the EFS17-85 to slightly soft images and it often has a problem with chromatic aberration (ie all the colours aren't focused together, so you get red and green fringing around bright objects). The cheap 50mm lens however produces very similar results to the professional quality EF28-70 2.8L lens. Of course, it is far more restricted in terms of the shots you can take, but for boudoir photography and portrait work it represents stunning price/performance and excellent value. For those on budget, it could be the single biggest step you can take to improving your photographs!
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