If you ask a photographer that has been shooting for a long time "which is your favorite portrait lens," most will have a very specific answer for you.
For me, the Nikon 85mm f 1.4 is definitely my favorite bridal portrait lens! This lens is extremely fast at f 1.4 and at a distance of 6 to 10 feet the area of focus is only about an inch or so wide. This means you have to nail the focus on the eye nearest you. Doing this does take some practice because of the very narrow depth of field, but if you miss your focus point even by a little bit the results will not be very good, but nail the focus and the results can be magical.
Here are three images that I shot wide open at f 1.4 with the 85mm Nikon. The only edits were slight color adjustments because these are RAW images. These images were all shot using only available widow light with no additional lighting.
Take a look at how the backgrounds smoothly melt away allowing you to direct attention to a very specific area of the image.
There is no way to get this kind of result with a lesser lens. For a lot less money the Nikon 85mm f 1.8 comes pretty close but for me the f 1.4 rules!
What's your favorite lens?
