Photography requires the need of having a proper camera with a suitable lens. The most common lens that is used for portrait photography is the 50mm lens. This lens has found its place in the world of photography because of its ability to provide a better field of view with improved results. Many people ask why you need a 50mm lens for portrait photography because they don’t know the absolute best use of this lens.
Similar Articles you may like to read –
35mm vs 50mm vs 85mm Lens Comparison for Portrait Photography
Is 24mm too wide for portraits?
85mm Composition Tips for Portrait Photography
50mm vs 85mm for portraits
Luckily, we are providing this article to help you get all the information about 50mm lens and their uses for portrait photography. After reading this, you will be able to analyze why a 50mm lens is considered mostly for taking portrait shots.
What Makes 50mm So Unique?
A 50mm lens is one of the most affordable and versatile lenses in the photography market. By using a 50mm lens, you may create a natural-looking image that makes the viewer feel as though they are inside the picture, admiring the subject you are photographing. The image makes us feel comfortable. Its significant clarity is obtained with the help of full-frame sensors. When you use an APS-C sensor that has been cropped, the sensor essentially reduces the size of the image by a factor of about 1.6.
In other words, your 50mm lens gives you an image that is considerably closer to 80mm in terms of focal length, which is considered short telephoto. This way, the portraits captured with this lens have better clarity and more details.
Portrait photography aims at capturing the personality, character, and emotions. It can either be candid or artistic. Portrait photography requires more than just the ability to understand your camera settings, lighting, and composition.
You must also possess the ability to connect with your subjects and capture their unique qualities. So, it is a difficult but rewarding genre of photography.
Click Below to read a comprehensive guide to learning and mastering the art of portrait photography.
What Is the Purpose of a 50mm Lens?
Despite appearing modest, the 50mm lens has many applications in photography. Out of all the prime lenses, the 50mm is generally a favorite to many photographers. Remember that a 50mm lens’s focal length cannot be changed, in contrast to zoom lenses. Even if you zoom out, a 50mm fixed lens is probably not going to give you the same viewing angle as an 18mm lens when shooting landscapes.
But it is still great for portraiture. It’s possible to capture stunning portrait photography using 50mm lenses. Although each lens is unique and has its own advantages, the 50mm lens excels at capturing sharp images that fall inside its field of view. Images taken with 50mm lenses typically have hazy backgrounds since this lens will only focus on one precise area.
A 50mm field of view will show you what the scene will appear to be. You will get shallow depth and prominent subjects in portraiture. You will mostly get an aperture of f/1.8 with a 50mm lens. If your lens has a large aperture, you can utilize a quick shutter speed to qualify it as a fast lens.
Why Use a 50mm Lens?
When photographers are prepared to move beyond the typical kit lens, they are in search of a versatile lens like 50mm. The 50mm is typically the first choice taken into account when changing to a more competent prime lens that offers larger and quicker apertures. These are available with fast, wide-shooting f1.8 or f1.2 apertures. You may capture large full-body photographs with the 50mm as well as superb waist-up shots of your subject.
Depending on the minimum focus distance, a 50mm lens can be used for a close-up headshot and portrait photography. This is the minimum distance needed for your subject to be in focus on the lens. With an aperture of f1.8 or even f2.8, some of the most versatile 50mm lens enables you to get great portraits. You will be able to get close-up photos while optimizing bokeh or background blur. With the help of these lenses, you can also capture images in dynamic photography.
You can experiment more with your camera models to produce dynamic photography that offers compelling stories or is a powerful attention grabber. These lenses can serve the best purpose in situations where we need to record fast motions to capture the momentum. To define the characteristics of a 50mm lens more clearly, we will explain each of the important factors.
Better Image Result
A 50mm lens has wonderful image quality. We are talking about how well the lens captures detail. Due to their strong internal focus point, 50mm lenses have an advantage over zoom lenses in terms of producing sharp photos. This can assist you in taking pictures that have a clear focus on the subject or give your image a nice sense of depth and proportion.
In either case, 50mm lenses are robust, excellent for exploring emotions, and perfect for catching minute details.
Better Bokeh Effect
Using a 50mm lens correctly, you will get portraits with having better bokeh effect. One illustration of the countless possibilities is seeing the image having a better depth of field. This is because the depth of field gets shallower as the aperture speed increases. Wide-aperture 50mm lens will produce really lovely bokeh, resulting in pictures that look much more polished and atmospheric.
This results in stunning bokeh-blurred backgrounds or foregrounds and a true separation of your subject from its surroundings in portraiture.
More articles you may like to read –
How To Improve Your Natural Light Portrait Photography
how to use Natural Backlight in Portrait Photography
Best time of the day for outdoor portraits
Great Control In Low Light
This type of lens also helps you get good portraits even in low light conditions. Your camera’s pop-up flash really kills the mood of the photo. You need your dependable nifty fifty if you want soft, natural light. You can take portraits without a flash with even entry-level 1.8 50mm prime lenses. At any ISO, a lens’s available shutter speed increases with its faster aperture.
Additionally, if you’ve been using a kit lens, you won’t believe the sharpness difference you receive when using a prime lens. It will increase your comprehension and help you become a better photographer because of the variety of creative alternatives it provides.
Key Points Of A 50mm Lens
- The field of view of a 50mm lens is identical to a human eye view. Literally, the magnification is the same.
- You can create stunning, naturally lit photographs with a lovely shallow depth of field and clear focus.
- When positioned to the side of your head like side blinders, the edge of your hands will be the edge of the 50mm lens’s frame. One of the most adaptable lenses on the market is this one.
- With a 50mm lens, you capture exactly what you see.