What lenses would you recommend as a must have for someone starting out in Photography?
January 31st, 2010 | 
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Especially those fascinated in actuation portraits.
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120-150mm
make sure you buy the right company that makes your camera’s lenses
1. 50 mm as a standard lens, 1.7 or less.
2. Around 28mm wide angle.
3. About 135mm telephoto.
Get a portrait filter fo the 50mm lens as that will be the most used lens.
Use fast film, if using film I usually use 400 when using film camera, and a lot of natural lighting. NO Flash! Stand about 3 feet from subject. (fill viewfinder with subject)
That is about the basics. From there you can expand with lenses.
Remember the lower the lens number, 1.7 e.g., the better the lens.
My digital camera has a protrait setting on it.
It depends on the chip size!
On 35mm or DSLR full sized chip equivalent and I would go for:
24-28mm
50mm (std)
75-85mm (portrait)
Or a zoom or 2 covering the range - ideally with a wide aperture (f2.8 or so)… much more expensive but it will make a huge impact on your work if you know how to use them (and light!).
You need to make an allowance for a factor of 1.6 on sub sized chip cameras like the Canon 400d, so a 10mm lens will then act like a 16mm lens.
Personally I wouldn’t go for a long tele - in 18 years as a pro covering a very wide range of subjects I very rarely need a long tele… they look good but are not practical for GP photography (essential for sports, wildlife, surveillance and paparazzi… but not much use in many other situations).
If it’s a full frame DSLR–then 100 mm lens would be perfect for portraits.
Canon 100 mm f 2.8 Macro on Canon 5D
Same lens
Basically the photographer is far enough from the subject–and you wouldn’t want to use anything too wide anyway, it makes the subject look like this:
(Canon 16-35 mm f 2.8 L at 16 mm setting)
The kit lens that comes with your camera is a good, all-around lens that you can begin with.
If you’re getting a cropped sensor DSLR (and most of them are)–a 50 mm lens would work as a 75 to 80 mm, which is just a tad “shorter” than 100 mm–so it’s really good for portrait, too.
I think you should get to know your camera first and just use the lens that comes with it… then slowly buy new lenses later on… macro, telephoto, wide angle, fish eye, etc.
The Canon Rebel XTi comes with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens… that’s a good lens to start out with and is good for portraits.
Just starting out? Just buy the 50 mm f1.8. That design is universally cheap to buy yet delivers spectacular image quality.
Learn to use your “foot zoom.” If you start with a wide-ranging zoom lens you may get lazy and never develop a skills of framing and perspective by lens length selection.
You didn’t mention what format you are shooting. I am going to assume 35MM or APS-C.
I have been using 24mm. 50mm, and 85mm since I started shooting SLRs in 1989. I recently purchased a Canon 5D and a 200mm F/2.8.
That is all the lenses you need. (Unless you are doing something special like wildlife photography or Macro work.)
I prefer speed and quality over convenience.
1. 50mm f/1-2
2. 65mm f/2-4
3. 85 f/2-6
any lens ranging from those are perfect for portrait photography.