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What lens would you recommend with Nikon D5600 for professional portraits

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15 replies to this topic

#1
davidlogan

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Hello everyone,
I have the Nikon D5600 DSLR camera. It's a great camera but the kit lens (18-55mm) is sucks. I'm looking to get professional portraits in the first place. I made my online research and found this lenses guide.
 
Which lens is the best for portraits with blurry backgrounds:
  1. Nikon 35mm F1.8G Lens
  2. Nikon 50mm F1.8G
  3. Nikon AF-P DX 10-20mm f/4.5-5.6G VR

Thank you



#2
Merco_61

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Definitely not the 10-20 as it is too wide for anything but PJ style environmental portraits. Besides being too short, it has a large smallest aperture that won't let you blur the background.

The 35 and the 50 work well, but for very different types of portraiture. The 35 works for two-person and full body portraits, the 50 for headshots and half-body. If you try to shoot a head or head-and-shoulders portrait with the 35, you will have to go close enough that the perspective looks distorted to get the shot. If you try to get some of the environment in the shot or shoot full body with the 50, you will often run out of room when shooting indoors.

 

If you go up too close, the nose will look huge and the ears very small as the distance between them is large compared to the focus distance. When you are a reasonable distance away, the perspective looks much more natural.



#3
Bengan

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If you are looking at just one lens I would suggest a 50 mm för ASP-C bodies.

I have little to no experience with Nikon glass and can't comment on the one you are listing. Before you decide you may want to have a look att what Sigma and Tamron have to offer.



#4
Snorky

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I'm using an 18-70mm lens for portraits. Picked it up used... it's tack sharp and compact.



#5
Ron

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Of the three lenses you listed, the 50mm would probably give you the best results. On a DX camera it has the same angle of view as a 75mm lens on an FX camera which is just shy of the classic portrait lens focal length (85mm).

 

I've personally had great results using a Nikkor AFS-85mm f/1.8G on my DX cameras. On DX this lens gives an angle of view that's close to that of a 135mm lens and does a really good job of throwing the background out of focus at any f stop below f/5.6 or so. With the right lighting the results can be magical.

 

Of course, all of the zoom lenses that reach 100mm or so and up should also give good results. Of these my favorite is the FX Nikkor AFS-70-300VR which, when used on DX, produces very nice portraits with creamy bokeh.

 

--Ron



#6
davidlogan

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very helpful answers. thank you for the help . I will go with the Nikon 50mm F1.8G 



#7
fallout666

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18-70mm, 50mm, 35mm and 85mm are best portraits lens to look at. 



#8
Browtography

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Hey David,

 

I have a D5600, just bought a 24 x 70 2.8 ED lens, it’s amazing and does both portrait and landscapes beautifully.  A great all round lens, that’ll make your kit a lot more flexible.  Just saw this post and thought I’d pass this along, not many 5600 users out there! 
 

Browtography.  



#9
Crotlaus

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Get the AF-S NIKKOR 50mm F1.4 G as it give you much better backgrounds wide open. It is a great lens for low light also and has a 75mm full frame size.  It is a little more expensive but if you do a lot of portraits it is well worth it.  

 

"the kit lens (18-55mm) is sucks"<snip> I have a friend of mine that is a semi pro and makes money photographing of all things, food. His comment one time was you can go into a camera store and buy the cheapest camera and lens and get superb gallery grade photos. You can buy the most expensive camera and lens and get nothing but crap. It is the person behind the camera that makes the difference.   



#10
Those Who Squirm

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I have the D5600 and the Nikkor f/1.8 50mm manual focus lens in addition to the two lenses that came with the camera. At f/1.8 I find that I can't quite fully focus this lens; it seems the focus ring just won't go quite far enough. If I stop it down a notch, though, it's fine. I don't know if this is an idiosyncrasy of the camera model, or the lens, or both of them when used together--or something else entirely. I just thought I'd mention it.

I use this lens mostly for astrophotography and it works well for that.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

#11
Merco_61

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I have the D5600 and the Nikkor f/1.8 50mm manual focus lens in addition to the two lenses that came with the camera. At f/1.8 I find that I can't quite fully focus this lens; it seems the focus ring just won't go quite far enough. If I stop it down a notch, though, it's fine. I don't know if this is an idiosyncrasy of the camera model, or the lens, or both of them when used together--or something else entirely. I just thought I'd mention it.

I use this lens mostly for astrophotography and it works well for that.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

What version of the 50/1.8 is this?

What do you mean about the focus ring not going far enough?



#12
Those Who Squirm

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What version of the 50/1.8 is this?
What do you mean about the focus ring not going far enough?

From the barrel of the lens:

AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 D

By the focus ring not going far enough, I mean exactly that. I'll be turning it clockwise and watching the stellar images on the LV monitor sharpen as I do so. Then, just when it seems that another tiny nudge of a turn is needed to achieve perfect sharpness, the ring won't turn.

This is really only an issue with astrophotography as far as I've seen. As I said the lens usually does work very well for that, and that's because I usually stop the lens down a notch or two, say to f/2.2. But once in a while I do want to open the lens up all the way, like when I'm capturing a star cluster in the center of the frame and don't care about lens distortion or chromatic aberration around the edges, because I plan to crop them out.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

#13
Merco_61

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That is not one of the six manual focus versions. It is the third version of the screw-drive AF lens. The fact that it doesn't autofocus on the D3xxx and D5xxx bodies doesn't change this fact.

 

This version is slightly soft wide open, even in the centre of the frame, at close to infinity and beyond. Things improve lots as soon as the aperture blades close the slightest amount, so even f/2 is enough to get crisp shots at infinity. The slight increase in DOF going from f/1.8 to f/2.2 isn't significant but the increase in contrast explains what you are seeing.



#14
Those Who Squirm

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That is not one of the six manual focus versions. It is the third version of the screw-drive AF lens. The fact that it doesn't autofocus on the D3xxx and D5xxx bodies doesn't change this fact.

This version is slightly soft wide open, even in the centre of the frame, at close to infinity and beyond. Things improve lots as soon as the aperture blades close the slightest amount, so even f/2 is enough to get crisp shots at infinity. The slight increase in DOF going from f/1.8 to f/2.2 isn't significant but the increase in contrast explains what you are seeing.


Come to think of it, I do remember that this lens is MF only for the camera bodies you mention. That shouldn't matter, though, since I wouldn't want b to use AF for astro anyway.

If I follow your answer aright, the increase of aperture to f/1.8 causes a reduction in contrast. Is this due to the increase in total exposure? If so, I suppose stepping down the duration or the ISO setting could compensate? Of course, all my astro shots start out extremely pale and washed out, and I use Photoshop to fix that.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

#15
Merco_61

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All lenses are softer wide open than slightly stopped down, the AF 50/1.8 just shows it more than most.

 

Picture a nice curved glass element (not the whole lens... just one element).
Now picture just behind this, you have an adjustable aperture that you can make either large or small.

Imagine that it is set to a large opening.

For each ONE pixel on your sensor, light is actually coming through and focusing from across the entire surface of this lens. The same is true for the pixel next to that one... and the next one, etc. In other words if you could shrink yourself down to microscopic size and stand on just ONE of those pixels, you would see light coming through from the entire opening in the lens... not just one pin-point location.

This means any property of optics (optical flaws, chromatic & spherical aberration, etc.) has more opportunity to cause a bit of light to land in some location OTHER than the spot where you ideally would have wanted it when you have a larger opening. Hence... "less-sharp" focus in areas meant to have "sharp" focus. At the same time... a pleasing advantage is that you can have much stronger out-of-focus blur in those areas which were not meant to be in sharp focus.

When you shrink the size of the aperture/opening, light is confined to a smaller space. Since the opening shrinks around the central axis of the lens where the glass tends to be less curved, the effect of things such as spherical and chromatic aberration is reduced... and this results in a sharper and higher-contrast image.

 

This is, of course a simplified explanation and things get more complex taking into account the six elements in five groups that make up the 50/1.8, but the aperture blocking off the most curved part of some elements still holds true.



#16
Crotlaus

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With my old Olympus OM film cameras I had a 55mm f1.2. It was a little soft when fully opened, but gave a pleasing appearance to portraits. With ASA/ISO 400 film it was great in low light.  Portraits also can be pleasing with a soft focus filter. If you don't have one, get one and do some experimenting. On another thought I miss Kodachrome.







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