Ken Rockwell has posted what I think is one of his most interesting observations on which lens to use for TAKIING PORTRAITS OF PEOPLE.
The post is HERE but the starting point is that we should be standing 15 feet (5 metres) from the subject. It makes a lot of sense to me because some of the nicest head shots I have made have been with a 180mm lens. And with even a 100mm lens, moving closer puts the shape of the head ‘under strain’ if I can put it that way.
This shot was taken with a 105mm lens on a dSLR and I think the only reason it works is because the subject has an Asian face, which can ‘stand’ being pulled about more than a face with stronger, more prominent features. I think it is for that reason that shots of babies can be taken from much closer and with wider-angle lenses without their faces looking like a sheep is staring down the lens.
The Sheep Effect
In the post, he states which focal length to use to capture just a face, or head and shoulders, or more, and whether you are using a digital camera with a crop factor, or a full frame camera. Take a look at his post.
Doubly interesting to me is that from a psychological point of view, 15 feet gives a very different vision of reality than closer up does. I like talking to people across a room. Strangely perhaps, I find it quite intimate and feel I can really see what is going on between us. It could be that as an Englishman, my preferred social distance is greater than is that case with some other cultures but somehow I think something else is going on.
On a related but ‘reversed’ topic, I saw an interesting article once about the distortion caused by shooting a subject with a short focal length lens. In this case the subject was a car, and the shot was taken extremely from just a foot or so away, with a wide angle lens. Viewed from a normal view distance the car looked distorted. Viewed from just a couple of inches from the print, the car looked normal. Try it for yourself!
Which leads me to this final comment, which is something I read just a short while ago. I cannot remember where I read it, or I would give the attribution, but the comment went something like “the viewing distance for a photographer is the length of his nose.”
