Re: canon 24-105 f4 L IS
An obvious question is full-frame or crop camera, as the answer on what is a good portrait lens can vary...
BTW I thought this review had some interesting comparisons between a cheap prime (which I have) and the 24-105 (which I also have):
But if people are moving around zooms can be handy (although with cameras having 18+MP cropping to zoom works pretty well too).
Two things on portraits, one is you probably aren't super-fussy about spending big bucks on a lens that's sharp all the way to the corners wide-open, as you probably don't want them that sharp and secondly you may well care almost as much about how nice the out-of-focus stuff looks as much as how sharp it is in the centre.
Make that three things...
Ah, except the search tools won't get me back to my old post about focal lengths for portraits and how the human brain perceives them. Short version is 80mm and up in 35mm terms is good.
Err, since I missed that last one and while I'm at it I'll throw this one in too:
(Warning - slightly rude, but lots of quite fun analysis and good points on flash and depth-of-field.)
Without other constraints I'd use (on FF) the 85/1.2 mkII followed by the 70-200 f2.8 mk II since I can stop the former down as much (or not) as I like and the out-of-focus stuff is better than the 70-200, both are sharp enough. I'd agree with Colin that the ability to zoom in can be handy in large areas. BTW I also really like the sharpness and out-of-focus blur on the Panasonic version of the 70-200 2.8, e.g. http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51252546 (which is an easy way for me to post a 16MP pic here I think), click on "original size" - not bad for straight-out-of-camera, although I have better "posed" pics from that session but didn't put them online at 16MP as this one shows sharpness and blur just fine and that was my desired point, it's a technical forum. The Panny also focuses better on a GH3 than the 85/1.2 does on a 5DmkII, but when the 85 is good it's great. (The last bit is saying good focusing, a sharp centre and nice out-of-focus stuff matters most IMHO.)
An obvious question is full-frame or crop camera, as the answer on what is a good portrait lens can vary...
BTW I thought this review had some interesting comparisons between a cheap prime (which I have) and the 24-105 (which I also have):
But if people are moving around zooms can be handy (although with cameras having 18+MP cropping to zoom works pretty well too).
Two things on portraits, one is you probably aren't super-fussy about spending big bucks on a lens that's sharp all the way to the corners wide-open, as you probably don't want them that sharp and secondly you may well care almost as much about how nice the out-of-focus stuff looks as much as how sharp it is in the centre.
Make that three things...
Ah, except the search tools won't get me back to my old post about focal lengths for portraits and how the human brain perceives them. Short version is 80mm and up in 35mm terms is good.
Err, since I missed that last one and while I'm at it I'll throw this one in too:
(Warning - slightly rude, but lots of quite fun analysis and good points on flash and depth-of-field.)
Without other constraints I'd use (on FF) the 85/1.2 mkII followed by the 70-200 f2.8 mk II since I can stop the former down as much (or not) as I like and the out-of-focus stuff is better than the 70-200, both are sharp enough. I'd agree with Colin that the ability to zoom in can be handy in large areas. BTW I also really like the sharpness and out-of-focus blur on the Panasonic version of the 70-200 2.8, e.g. http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51252546 (which is an easy way for me to post a 16MP pic here I think), click on "original size" - not bad for straight-out-of-camera, although I have better "posed" pics from that session but didn't put them online at 16MP as this one shows sharpness and blur just fine and that was my desired point, it's a technical forum. The Panny also focuses better on a GH3 than the 85/1.2 does on a 5DmkII, but when the 85 is good it's great. (The last bit is saying good focusing, a sharp centre and nice out-of-focus stuff matters most IMHO.)
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