In this video I'm going to share with you
guys my top 3 favorite Sony
full-frame lenses for shooting portraits.
Welcome back to The Breakdown my name is
Miguel Quiles and I thought I would
take some time today, to talk to you guys
about my favorite portrait lenses, when
I'm shooting with Sony full-frame
cameras. Now for the lion's share of my
work I actually use a lens like this
this is the 85 mm f/1.8 lens from
Sony. Now if you shoot with other brands
85 mm 1.8 is a very common focal
length to be able to get for any system,
but specifically with Sony I really
really love this lens. It actually gives
me the ability to shoot very close-up
portraits which, if you follow my work
online, you'll see that I love shooting
very tight cropped portraits, and the 85mm
does a really good job of flattering
features on people's faces. It doesn't
actually give them kind of a round
distorted look to their face, which I
really like with this lens. Now with the
85mm 1.8 from Sony, it also
features the focus hold button, as does
the other two picks but we'll talk about
those momentarily. But this focus hold
button will help me to be able to get
the eyes in focus, since I have it set to
IAF on all of my full-frame camera
bodies so the 85mm 1.8, if I go
through all of the images that I've shot
over the last five or six years, chances
are 85 mm is where I shot them
at.
Alright let's talk about my second pick
or portrait lenses on the Sony full
frame system, which is the 100mm
2.8GM STF lens. STF stands for
Smooth Transition Focus. This actually
has two lens elements in the inside of
this lens, and what it does really
without getting too technical, is that it
gives you better blurred backgrounds, so
if you're photographing people, you get a
really nice separation between your
subject, and the background, a little bit
different than what you would get if you
were shooting wide open on an 85nn 1.8,
even though it's a f/2.8 lens. So the
really cool thing about this, and you
might be wondering well if you have an
85 mm lens, why would you get a
100mm lens? They're both
very similar focal lengths. The really
great thing about this in particular is
that it actually gives you much sharper
subjects, so for example if I'm
photographing and taking a portrait of a
person, let's say they have really good
skin, and I want to be able to capture
that skin texture in the image, I would
reach for the 100mm STF
lens over the 85mm 1.8, because I could
actually get more detail, more texture in
that portrait. Now the inverse is also
true if I'm taking a portrait of
somebody, who maybe doesn't have great
skin maybe they have scars, or they're
very self-conscious about those things. I
would not grab this lens I would
actually go for the 85mm so I tend to
switch between these two lenses just
depending on how much of the sharpness
I am  trying to get out of this portrait,
and am I trying to blur a background or
not, so 100 mm STF really awesome lens!
Now the third lens that I really love to
use when I'm shooting portraits, whether
I'm in the studio or shooting on
location, is the 70mm to 200mm
lens from Sony. Now this
particular one is the G master version
which is an f/2.8 aperture, and it is a
really fantastic lens if you're going
outdoors, and you don't want to switch
lenses, because obviously you have an 85mm
and a 100mm, but let's just say you don't
want to invest in a bunch of lenses, you
just want to buy one lens, go outside and
take a bunch of portraits. The 70-200mm
is the lens for you. This particular lens,
the reason why I reach for it, is that it
actually gives you prime lens type of
sharpness, at every single focal range,
it's a really awesome lens to be able to
do that. Now the downside of it is, it is
quite a bit bigger and heavier than
these two lenses, so you will be walking
around with a little bit of added weight
on your camera. However any situation
that you run into, if you want to shoot a
tight shot, if you want to shoot a full
body image, you could do all of that with
a 70-200mm without any type of
compromise alright everybody so those
are my top three portrait lenses. Whether
I'm shooting outdoors, if I'm shooting in
the studio, these are the ones that I
reach for every time when I'm shooting.
Now one of the things that I also want
to mention again, is that all three of
the lenses that we talked about have
this focus hold button on the side of
the lens, which I typically will set to I
autofocus. now if you're not sure what I
autofocus is I did a video for
Adorama for my episodes of The Breakdown,
where you can actually see, and we'll
link it here in this video. You could
actually watch and see exactly what that
I autofocus feature will do, but all of
the lenses do offer that, and it's
something that's very, very useful, when
you're shooting portraits. With that
being said I hope you guys enjoyed this
episode. Make sure that you like comment
and subscribe, and if you get a chance
make sure that you go check out the
Adorama Learning Center they have a lot
of great content there on cameras, video
drones, all sorts of great stuff. So thank
you so much for watching The Breakdown
and I will see you in the next video.
Bye everybody!
