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35mm or 50mm for full body portraits for Nikon DX camera?

Photography Asked by arun_kol on October 9, 2020

I have the Nikon D7500 which comes with the two kit lenses. I found that I did not get satisfactory bokeh when shooting full body images outside. My main aim is to be able to shoot full body portraits with some background and good bokeh.

I looked online and found that there are two options that people recommend which are the 35mm DX lens and the 50mm FX lens. I am confused between the two because I am seeing contradictory advice between them. Some say that the 50mm makes the field of view very narrow, while the 35mm images do not look as good. The advantage of having the 50mm lens would be it would allow upgradation to a FF camera but I might never do that as I am happy with my current camera. And I have also read that you can use the 35mm lens on FF cameras at low f-stops. Is that a good idea?

I am very confused regarding this and since I have been shooting for only a year, I dont think I can make a good enough judgement and wanted some help.

3 Answers

Shooting full bodies with "satisfactory" bokeh is not easy. The diameter of your background blur is f/a where a is your aperture number. With full bodies filling the frame, you probably want bokeh circles for distant background that are at least 30mm in comparison to the body and/or facial features. Which is about 50mm/1.6. Shooting with 50mm on a DX sensor is possible, but you'll have to place your subjects at considerable distance to get them full-body, and the background at considerably more distance to give it sufficient blur. That can be difficult.

Full body shots with bokeh are more or less the quintessential use case for "full-frame with prime lens". You can labor around it a bit, but that requires lots of space for getting your scene set up and makes your subjects appear a bit flatter than if you work with an FX setup.

Answered by user94588 on October 9, 2020

Things to consider…

35mm in a DX body will let you take full body shots from reasonably close.
This will, however, give you 'short legs syndrome' if you're not careful. Shooting from any lower than chest height to try balance the leg length starts to get a bit 'up the nose'. Your bokeh will be harder to achieve on a relatively wide lens, even with the aperture wide open.

50mm will let you step back a bit, but you are now probably in 'must do this outdoors' territory in order to get sufficient distance between you, your subject & your background.

You can test both these ideas out first using your kit lens, just to see how the framing & leg length works, if not the bokeh.
Late edit I just realised you said 'two kit lenses', my bad - so you should be able to test this at all lengths & then know what you need for framing.
Add to that that your bokeh will get 'bigger' on a longer lens, so long as you can achieve the necessary distances.

Stepping up to an 85mm [or even longer] will improve your bokeh still further, and completely fix 'short legs', but you now need even more space to work in.
I'd be inclined to rent or borrow an 85mm, or 105mm or even a fast 70-200mm zoom before finally choosing which you need, or have space to use.
Personally, I tend to go for the longest lens I have room to step back for, for anything I need to separate subject from high blur background.

I guess one additional constraint might be budget. You can get a 35mm 1.8 for just over $£€ 100 if you shop carefully [it's nice enough but it's not a bokeh king, by a long shot], but the 1.4s go up in price pretty sharply - $£€ 400 for the 50mm up to $£€ 1,400 for the 85mm & nearly 2 grand for the 105mm.

Answered by Tetsujin on October 9, 2020

50mm and back up a few feet. F4. Make sure your subjects have plenty of space behind them. Focus on the eyes or none of it will matter. Don't focus anywhere else.

Answered by Robert Allen Kautz on October 9, 2020

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