Portrait perspective: Quiz and two questions

[Patrik Roseen]

I have glanced through alot of photobooks lately, including head,half height and fullheight body pictures. Some of these included data about filmformat and size of lens...and it is very hard to see any pattern in which lens is the one to use for certain pictures. What I did learn however, is that the lens is very much chosen based on the appropriate distans to the subject due to e.g. how the lighting is composed not to interefere by creating shadows, not being able to step away from the subject, avoiding unnecessary background information etc.

[Frank Petronio]

I bet if you could calculate the focal length of many famous paintings, they'd be wide enough to surprize you. I tend to go wider for roundness and volume. But I also narrow most faced 5% or so in Photoshop because I am a fashion victim and don't want my faces looking fat.

Frankly, I think long lens portraits are far easier, almost to the point of cheating. I much prefer the classic Avedon/Penn portraits done with the 80mm on the 6x6 Rolleiflex. I have shot 4x5 with everything from a 127 to a 300, and I like my 8x10s done with the 300 as well as the 360.

[Ted Harris]

Frank is right on point with is brief discussion of faces. There are many variables in addition to the lens that need to be considered ... the size and shape of the face of your subject, the effect you wish to achieve, the available lighting, your finesse (or the subject's) with makeup, etc. All of these need to work together.

Having said all that for formal sittings I generally use a 300mm Apo Symmar or a 250mm Imagon for 4x5 depending on the final effect I am after. I prefer to work with controlled lighting so I can use it to 'model' the planes of my subject's face and bone structure.

[Mike H.]

Jerry, I bet you and Leonard Evans would get along just great! I could sit there and watch the two of you talk just as though I was watching at a verbal tennis match, and although I would really, truly, greatly admire your skills at math and lens dynamics, I wouldn't have a clue what was being said. I make my images by sticking closely to a prescribed procedure given to me by my large format instructor and never worry about the rest of it. My mind is all on seeing and composing the image. And I'm comfortable with that.

[Jim Galli]

Thank goodness understanding all that math is not really requisite to portraiture or I'd be left out in the cold. I'll make a guess that 99.8% of portraits are done by photogs that simply learn what works by trial and error. 8X10 and larger portraiture becomes something of a special case though. Since a human head can roughly fill an 8X10 frame, an 810 shooter that's doing busts is always working somewhere near 1:1 or a little less. To get to 1:1 with a 1680mm lens would require 3360mm of bellows. To get 1:1 with a 480mm lens requires 960mm bellows. I've found by my seat of the pants method that you really don't need anything longer than 12 - 16" (sorry to break your mm rule but history wins here) for 810 portraiture, and 1000's of old time studios would bear this out.

Here are a couple done with my 13" P&S Series IV.



Done with a 13" lens at roughly 25+" bellows for a near 1:1 head. So was my 13" lens a 13" or a 25" ?



Same lens but this time the bellows was more like 18" or 19"
(forgive the dirty scans).

A 15" lens on an 8X10 with a 30" bellows is manageable for most things. The old timers with their big Century Bi Centennial camera stands and their Century 9A cameras knew exactly what they were doing.

On 11X14, I'm just scratching the surface, but 19" - 22" seems "logical" to an old 'seat-of-the-pants' photog. You can actually make a human head bigger than lifesize with the 1114.



The above was done with a Voigtlander 22" Petzval and bellows at perhaps 47".

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

A useful discussion here sans math:
http://www.apug.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15090

[Bruce E. Rathbun]

All math factors aside I find that a 14" lens seems to be ideal for portraits on 8"x10" and a 19" for 11"x14". Assuming of course that the subject is framed from the waist up.

[Steve J Murray]

I've shot many many fine portraits, even "head and shoulders" with 35mm format with the 50mm lens and the 105mm lens. I think some fashion photogs use longer lenses to flatten perspective and blur backgrounds. The 50mm gives a more intimate feel to a portrait, and you are closer to the subject and can interact more intimately and capture nuance in expression more easily. I like the 105 too, but it flattens the features more, but gives a nice bokeh. Translating to 4x5 those would be fairly normal lenses. I agree with the other posts here: you really have to go by look and feel and not worry about the math.

[Bob Gentile]

All this "technical" math stuff reminds me of an interview with a musician -- an ol' blues legend. When asked if he was familiar with all the "technical" stuff (chord construction, progressions, etc.) he replied, "Oh, yeah! Sure! But... not enough to hurt my playing."

When it comes to portraits, forget the math. It's all about the expression!

[Jerry Fusselman]

Henry and David,

One quick question. Did you two give an answer to my question #1? Is it u, u+v, or something else? That is, are you two asserting that perspective is determined by the subject to front-nodal-point distance in agreement with my guess, or is it the subject-to-film-plane distance in disagreement with my guess, or is something else entirely?