Do you think Canon's 17-55 f2.8 IS lens best for portraits or you think some other lens is better?
I have a 30D camera. I would say no. It's a great lens but as someone alluded to, even though it's effectively in the usual portrait range of focal lengths on the long end, equivalent to 80+mm, that's deceiving. That only refers to the angle of view you get zoomed all the way out, but the compression or distortion generated by the lens does not change.
To expand, a standard lens is said to be 50mm because it most closely represents what the eye sees, both in angle of view and in compression, or how close objects appear to be to one another as we look deep into a scene. Lenses shorter than this tend to distort things, making them look wider (not the best thing for faces) and farther apart, while lenes longer make things look closer together and often make faces look more slim.
A 50mm lens is ok for portraits but normally we want a bit of compression and certainly no distortion, or widening of someones features when making a portrait. Lenses that get into the 80-135mm range tend to offer the most pleasing blend of compression and angle of view. Of course, when you put that 80mm lens on your digital camera and the magnification is applied, it becomes more like a 120mm in terms of angle of view so you will have to back up some.
I would say that if you had access to a lens that had 80mm to 135mm you would produce better results than this 17-55.
One more thing to think about is that longer lenses tend to blur out the background more, which is usually a plus when shooting portraits.
Good luck! This lens ought to work very well for portraits when zoomed out towards the 55mm focal length. This would be for head and shoulders portraits. I would zoom it to about 30mm for a full-length portrait. The large aperture of this lens will allow for selective focus, i.e. having your subject's face very sharp and the background out of focus, which is standard for portraits.
The only other lens that might give you better results is the 85mm f/1.8 which gives you a little more working distance and an even wider aperture for shorter depth of field. However, the zoom lens gives you the flexibility for a wider range of portraits from full length to fairly tight. Remember that you want to have some distance between you and your subject so that the person feels comfortable but also so that you reduce distortion in the face. Using shorter focal lengths requires that you get closer to the subject thus the face gets distorted (large nose, small ears, etc.) Hope this helps! Most portraits are shot between the 60mm to 90mm range. So no this is not a good portrait lens. This is considered more of a wide angle lens. They are good lenses, but not for portraits. This lens is more for scenic shots or for getting larger group pictures. On the 30D camera, the 17-55 is effectively the same as a 27-88 mm lens, so it does enter the portrait range. I think you'd be happier with less wide and more tele, though.
Not quite as much of a wide angle, the Canon Zoom Wide Angle-Telephoto EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Autofocus Lens (2007-$1,060) is a pretty good all-around lens. This review says, "If I had only one lens, this would be the one."
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Revie...
Go to this page and knock yourself out.
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon...
If I was going to choose a single focal length lens (and with 8 MP to play with - why not?) and money was no object, I'd look very seriously at the Canon EF 50 mm f/1.2 L USM lens. Man, what you could do with f/1.2 in portrait work... And the 50 mm translates into 80 mm on the 30D, which I consider about the ideal for portraits. (85-105 is my range.)
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Revie...
Maybe you can rent one and see what you think before you plunk down more than $1,350 for the lens... No, this lens is not the best for portraits. It is a good lens, but not the best because of it's zoom range. Generally any lens with a maximun aperture of f/2.8 or better and between 70mm and 100mm is best because they flatter facial features and are referred to as portrait length. For your particular camera I would recommend the EF 135mm f/2.8 with Softfocus. It will provide a softer focus if desired, but is capable of sharp focus as well. |
