How To Use a 50mm Lens to Shoot Portrait?

"DColucci" wrote in message
...
No, it is not possible to get good results. The lens is too
short


its very possible to get good results - see a pic from a 55mm lens


http://members.aol.com/dcolucci/m6.jpg


Here's another 50mm portrait:

http://www.bard-hill.co.uk/temp/Corinna_50mm_f1-2.jpg

This, I think, is where the 50mm length does work for people: not
going in too close, and including some 'environment' in the shot. This
one was taken during the interval of a rock concert, in a bar lit only
by flourescent tubes, with a Pentax 50mm f1.2 wide open on
TMax3200 rated at 1600.



Peter

"Bart van der Wolf" wrote in message
...

"Alan Browne" wrote
in message
news
me wrote:

I'm just being nosey here Alan but why can't you use your
TC with those lenses?

Minolta won't let me. The Maxxum TC's only 'fit' certain
Primes beginning at 135mm. It's due to the design of the
TC's. I believe that Kenko TC's (for Maxxum) will fit almost
all the lenses.

Yes, there may be a limitation due to protruding rear elements
of the lens hitting the front elements of the converter. Besides,
converters/extenders are optimized for longer focal lenses. I
haven't tried my Kenko on shorter lenses, but on a good
200mm lens I saw significant chromatic aberration in the
extreme corners. I can only imagine what it would do on wider
angle lenses which are much harder to design anyway.


Pentax seems to have addressed this issue specifically: their 2x and 1.4x
versions both come in 'L' and 'S' versions.

The L versions are optimised for longer lenses and both have projecting
front elements that would prevent them from fitting a lot of shorter lenses.
The S versions are designed specifically for shorter lengths. Pentax
literature says specifically which lenses work best with which TC - in
general the cutoff from S to L is around the 200mm mark, though there are a
couple of lenses longer than that that they state work better with the S
type.

The Ls are more expensive - but this approach seems to work since they are
very good - the 1.4xL in particular seems to have hardly any detrimental
effect on the image with my 600mm f4.



Peter

"Ryadia" wrote in message
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Alan Browne wrote:


As I said earlier, cropping a 50mm shot that was taken further back
is the same as using a longer lens uncropped. A
cropped sensor does the cropping for you.


That's not true Alan. The depth of field of a 50 mm lens is
greater than a 100mm lens. The "crop factor" is just that. It is
not, never will be and never can, produce the same results as
using a telephoto lens for a portrait.


Wrong. DoF is dependent on magnification, not on focal length. Thus you
get the same DoF with a 200mm lens used at forty feet as you do with a 100mm
used at twenty or a 50mm used at ten. And you get the same DoF _on the
final print_ with the 200mm at forty feet as you do by using the 50mm at
forty feet and (cropping and) enlarging the image four times. Why? Because
you've enlarged the circles of confusion four times as well.



Peter