210mm or 240mm for Portraits?

[Martin Aislabie]

The longer the lens - the more room you need.

This is often very important when shooting portraits - as you often cannot stand far enough back, if you are working inside.

Head shots are rarely a problem but 3/4 length shots can be a problem.

Martin

[CatSplat]

If you want something in the 240-ish range but don't want to deal with a Copal 3, maybe consider the Fujinon 250mm f/6.3 (or the earlier f/6.7 with greater coverage) in a Copal 1.

[Mick Fagan]

I have a Fujinon 210 f/5.6 which is pretty good for portraiture, I also have the Fujinon 250 f/6.3 which is quite better for portraiture; as far as I am concerned that is.

I've had and used various lenses around the 200mm to 215mm length on 4x5' cameras over the last couple of decades. However, after chancing upon a 250mm lens I have hardly used the 210mm lens. I quite specifically used the 250mm lens for a short while to get the feel of it, one day I had a portrait session with time. After using the 210mm for a couple of sheets, I switched to the 250mm for the next two sheets.

The sitter had a definite preference to the 250mm images; so did I. One thing I did do in this session, was to enlarge the image of the head on the ground glass, to approximately the same size. This was a requirement to get the clothing being photographed all in.

The differences are subtle, but there. Pretty much since acquiring the 250mm lens, I've used it exclusively over the 210mm lens.

The bottom line, is that either focal length will give very pleasing results.

The attached image is with my 250mm lens, the garage door behind the subject is about 250mm behind her head. If I had used the 210mm lens, I would have positioned her slightly further away from the garage door to get the same out of focus effect on the background. Essentially, one could get an almost identical image from either focal length, but the look of the 250mm seems to be just ever so slightly better than if shot with the 210mm focal length for my tastes; the f/stop used was f/16½.

Mick.

[Alan Gales]

Karsh is my favorite too. His Hemingway pic is largely responsible for my learning to shoot film.

Yes, great photograph of one of my favorite writers! Great story too!

https://karsh.org/photographs/ernest-hemingway/

[mdarnton]

It doesn't seem to have been mentioned here that many portrait photographers do not like the rendition of all of the modern lenses named, finding the out of focus areas unpleasant relative to the older tessar formula, which is famous for smooth out-of-focus rendering. Examples of tessars are the Commercial Ektar that Karsh used, and the very many f/4.5 old lenses floating around from Wollensak and Ilex.


BG
by Michael Darnton, on Flickr

and an overall creamy smoothness that modern lenses don't have:


Eric
by Michael Darnton, on Flickr

[Peter De Smidt]

This out-of-focus rendition appears quite good to me:


Fujinon 210 W @ f/8.

[mdarnton]

To me it looks hard. Same shot two lenses would be interesting.

[JRivito]

This out-of-focus rendition appears quite good to me:


Fujinon 210 W @ f/8.

Is this Fujinon W a wide angle lens? Does this matter at all for shooting portraits?

[Bernice Loui]

The "W" designation is irrelevant for your needs, only spec that is important is specified focal length.


Bernice

Is this Fujinon W a wide angle lens? Does this matter at all for shooting portraits?

[Peter De Smidt]

Hard in what way? I'm not disagreeing, I'm just not sure what you mean. I did also photograph the scene with a Verito, but I won't be able to get to editing that one for awhile.

Tessars have been made in tremendous variations, and they come with different shutters... I've seen some with good out-of-focus rending, but others have quite a bit of squirelliness.