35mm lens for people pictures?

[devermb]

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35mm lenses have the reputation for being wide angle landscape lenses. Before I sink some money into a 35mm lens for portrait, group and full body photography, I'd solicit advice on whether 35mm can be a good lens for people photos.

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[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello devermb,

 

Welcome.

 

Yes.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[bill]

35mm lenses have the reputation for being wide angle landscape lenses.

 

...only amongst the terminally hidebound and unimaginative.

 

I'd solicit advice on whether 35mm can be a good lens for people photos.

 

Yes.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[}{B]

A 35mm Summicron is my 'standard' lens as it is so versatile.

 

Here are a couple of photos of people taken with a 35mm Summicron MKIV pre Asph.

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/sports-leisure-time/140117-brass.html

[Guest Holy Moly]

35mm = the bodycap on my film cameras.....

 

mainly for people & street:

 

Balancing... | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

and by night again with the Summicron 35mm F2, version IV:

 

.. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

Leica lover in the dark | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

and with the Oly Pen it's 40mm equiv.:

 

Oysterfisher | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[alun]

Devermb, It depends on how close you like to work. I can't remember the correct technical description (a more technically minded member than me will know) but it may help to know that the 35mm perspective is such that you can gauge the width of what the lens sees by the distance you are from the subject/s. If you are ten feet away, the 35mm perspective will be roughly ten feet across; six, seven feet away, six, seven feet across.

 

I find the 35mm ideally suited to small groups of people. Roughly speaking (and this is all very rough) three or four people in a group will all be visible from say the waist up if you are six or seven feet away.

 

For single person portraits you do need to work pretty close. You also get quite a lot of air and space and context in the picture -- which I like. Some don't.

 

Virtually everything on my blog has been shot using a 35/2. There are a handful of 28mm and 50mm shots in there. For example, the post called 'The Hat Girl' I know for sure was a 50/2; the post called 'Spring is in the Air' was definitely a 28/2.8.

 

Hope this helps.

[Bo_Lorentzen]

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YES - the 35mm is a very intimate environmental portrait lens. I rarely remove it from my M.

 

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[Guest Ron (Netherlands)]

It has become the 'standard' lens on my M8.2, and therefore they are almost always on the camera, unless I want to use another lens for special purpose.....but of course the camera has the 1.3 cropfactor....

 

and here is the camera with my small collection of 'standard' 35mm lenses....I really like to use old lenses as well as (relatively) new ones.

 

[Paolo.Battista]

Absolutly yes.

I use my Summicron-R 35 f:2 lens with Digilux 3 and Olympus E-3, and the results are quite good.

The "quite 2x" multiplication factor helps in order to be further from the subject.

[Bo_Lorentzen]

Ron,

 

What a great collection of 35mm lenses, I was kind of thinking that I was a bit nuts for having two... feel much better now. :-)

 

.

[Rick]

Ron, thanks for that post... I feel a LOT better now.

[Pindy]

Most of what I do are people shots and I only own a 35mm.

 

 

[Guest mc_k]

... Before I sink some money into a 35mm lens for portrait...

 

if you mean head-and-shoulders portrait, you will get unflattering distortion of faces

[lars_bergquist]

if you mean head-and-shoulders portrait, you will get unflattering distortion of faces

 

But 'portrait' does not mean 'passport picture'. A portrait is not a severed head. A portrait is a picture that tells you something about the subject -- body language, clothes, environment. Which lens you use depends on the circumstances. But 35mm on the full format is definitely the most versatile of all 'people lenses'.

 

The basic rule is not to go closer than about 1.5m/4-5ft. Children, with their flatter and smaller heads, can tolerate closer distances.

 

The old man from the Age of the 3.5cm Elmar

[Rick]

35mm lenses have the reputation for being wide angle landscape lenses. Before I sink some money into a 35mm lens for portrait, group and full body photography, I'd solicit advice on whether 35mm can be a good lens for people photos.

 

The 35 has the reputation of being the world traveller of lenses. It is neither a people lens or a wide. But, it is both a wide and an excellent people lens. The 35 has been around the world as a wide and has been as intimate as a 75. It is the lens that you choose it to be or, that you exclude it to be. You write that 35's have a reputation of being a wide landscape lenses and the fact is: One's reputation usually isn't what one essentially is.

[Xmas]

Ron,

 

What a great collection of 35mm lenses, I was kind of thinking that I was a bit nuts for having two... feel much better now. :-)

 

.

 

Yes, but back to OP

 

It depends on your style, and statement you want to make, if you want only the subject head and shoulders a 9cm on film M, if you want perspective of where the subjects environment even a 28mm on film is ok.

 

Now how many 28s do I have?

 

Noel

[tobey bilek]

35 is OK for a group if you can`t squeese the people enough or back up far enough for a 50mm.

 

If you try to fill the frame with one or two people by getting in close, the pics look distorted. Some may say it is creative, I say weird. I can spot these a mile away.

Even a fifty, can make someone look out of proportion if you get close enough.

 

If you move in close with wide lenses, close objects like hands and noses loom large.

If you stay back 5 feet, you get fairly correct perspective and a lot of background which is distracting.

 

Cameras were sold for decades with 50 mm lenses for these reasons. When Leica used to have contests, usually 60% of the pics were made with the 50, the balance split with 35 and 90. Wedding people use a fifty whenever possible except for large groups or portraits.

 

In my opinion, a universal 35 is a fad. Save it for some street and tourist use. It is not a people lens except for "environmental portraits" where lots of background needs to be shown.

 

I have yet to see great wedding or family pics done on 35 mm.

[lars_bergquist]

Tobey, if "the universal 35mm" is a fad, then it is a fad that has been going on for something like half a century. That is rather more than average for a fad.

 

I must also say that your concept of "people pictures" seems to be pretty limited. In my usage, it spans quite a lot more than wedding photos. Like demonstrations and riots and festivals. And these I have shot with focal lengths ranging from 18 to 90mm. Oh yes, and my family too, especially with 35mm.

 

The old man from the Age of the 3.5cm Elmar

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[chuckw]

The 35 certainly is a "universal" lens and will work well for a substantial majority of creative 'people' shots. But, I concur with Tobey that if one tries to use a 35 as a pure portrait lens weird results can be expected. For example, try a full length portrait where the subject fills the frame and one will wind up with a subject that has unusually short legs and a long trunk or other appearance oddities.

[aymoon]

Tobey, you make a case in point about perspective used in people photography, though I (respectfully) disagree with your conclusions entirely.

 

The commonly accepted 'ideal' for traditional portraits is a perspective rendered when using a 90mm lens at a distance that provides a head and shoulders framing (roughly speaking). The important thing about this perspective is not rendered by the focal length of the lens used, but rather the distance between the photographer and the subject. IE. Perspective here relates to the angle from the viewer's eye to the features of the face, NOT to the field of view of the lens. There is a 'sweet spot' that is generally considered flattering, and is helped by a good separation between the subject and background afforded by using wide apertures at this focal length and distance.

 

Pindy's photos, however, are a perfect illustration of how focal length is irrelevant when it comes to good people photos. I think they are excellent pictures. If you study them, you'll notice that the position Pindy has chosen to photograph from provides the same perspective (as defined above) on the subject as a 90mm/H+S shot, but due to the shorter focal length gives us lots of other detail of the person(s) and how he/she/they relate to their environment.

 

Yes, if you need to include a large group of people then this perspective is naturally going to be compromised as you need to create a greater distance between yourself and the subject. This provides a far more acute perspective on each individual person, thus 'flattening' their features. This, however, moves us from portraiture into something different. As Lars said, if you are photographing a demonstration or a riot, it becomes less about the individual personality, and more about the group dynamic. The focus can be on action, amongst other things, rather than individual personality, and that is exactly what is desired.