The 85mm and the the 105 are also great choices.

Mark is my favourite Adorama presenter. I learned a lot from his photography tutorials.

Mark, good video! Making clear the benefits of a long lens. And working with professional models, perfect :) From my experience, people who are mostly or only used to selfies with their phone, are very used to seeing their face on a photo, made with a wide angle lens. And while we photographers think that 85mm is flattering, a wide angle lens makes skinnier. Compression makes a face appear wider. And so when taking a photo with a long lens, those people may find themselves looking less thin than expected. Just wanted to mention this, cause people will not always tell you at the spot. Is this making sense, or am I the only one experiencing this? Edit: not that I am promoting skinnier appearing people. Please not. But I think using a 40-50mm focal length could be most close to a realistic view.

When I was young and enjoying photography with my father as a shared hobby in the 70's and 80's, if you heard someone talk about a "portrait lens" they meant something that could go up to somewhere between about 120mm and 150mm. We got a 70mm-135mm and that got me everything I was interested in shooting with a Minolta film camera (SRT-101). Now I'm back at it decades later and seeing the proliferation of much shorter lenses if you can only have one lens.

It's quite simple to shoot a portrait with a >85mm focal length. Try to make a nice portrait on a 24/35 mm focal length, with maybe including some environment. Also there are studios where it could make sense using a wide angle.

I've been so lucky to have access to the 70-200 2.8 lens because my Dad has been a professional photographer for many years. Love this lens!

Love this guy. Very concise lectures.

Excellent topic Mark Wallace, the 3 C's make a lot of sense especially nowadays when keeping Social Distancing(comfort) is part of our everyday! But the Compression is key for realistic proportions. Funny people are so used to the Selfies but one thing with that is that most Camera Phones have a Wide Angle lens and many Selfies sometimes look odd. Thanks ADORAMA for having videos like these on your channel to learn how to make use of all the great Gear available in your fantastic store & site!

Absolutely since I also came from video. You would often zoom in to catch your focus so I would often use a 70-200mm zoom for my headshots. Good stuff 👏🏾 thank you.

Always good to see Mark dropping knowledge. I use a RF-24-105mm f4 (for right now). So I least I can stay back a bit when shooting in the studio and get some good composition and compression shots.

Beautiful model !

You somewhat mentioned this but it should also be emphasized even more that the background is compressed. If you are trying to shot the subject with the shadow out of frame it will be much easier to pull this off with a 200mm lens.

One of the primary reasons to use a longer lens is to be able to fill the frame when standing farther back from the subject. But, (esp with higher megapixel cameras), cropping can be used very effectively. So instead of a 70-200, a person could use, say, a sharp 50 or 85 (which would be smaller, lighter, cheaper, faster, and typically sharper than the 70-200), take one image, and then crop in for the waist and head shots.

Thanks Mark, Nothing new for me, but a great demonstration of why to use a big lens for portraits.

Funny, I'm actually considering to get a 70-200 for this exact reason. I'm using a 24-70 since years but I like less and less the distortions. At least in studio where I don't need composition. Thanks for the demo

Nice video. Informative and lovely shots.

well yea, assuming you have the distance to get the subject in the frame....

I shoot portrait with any lens that fit the composition and look I want, sometimes I like distortion and I can include the whole body or extended part of the model depending on the pose so I often use 24-70 or 24-105 and I seldom use my 70-200 and I even use my UWA 14mm and fisheye 11mm for portraits.

Teresa did not post these on her insta

I'm very happy with my Pentax full frame 18-200mm lens, does everything I need to do in a studio, thanks anyway, Leo

Thank you!

The "Making your model uncomfortable" named section was hilarious.

Not so simple. How bad a face turns when the subject is little (or more) overweight and you use these longer focal lenghts

bang on target ,, nice presentation

what about sharpness ? does the longer lens produce less sharper images

makes sense

I usually use a 28-70 2.8 ...sometimes the 70-200 is too long ...

Something is connected to the speedlight, a black pouch. Can you tell whats that is?

Yeah, use 200 mm lens and make your face look like a tree trunk. Long telephoto is not always the best choice. The face shape should be considered first.

Understand that if you don’t a full frame camera it’s not that easy😢

I recognize KZfaqrs always doing videos about ALL the advantages of, probably randomly, that specific focallenght, Sony release lately 🤣

My studio is not big enough for a long Lens :)

There really is no lens compression...it is all about the camera/subject distance.

2:24 - 😂

Would have been a good 3 minute video....had to keep advancing...