November 28, 2018

Portrait with XF 55-200mm

XF 56mm f/1.2 is my go-to lens for portrait. However, when you’re on vacation with friends and you want to shoot both landscape and portrait, sometimes there’s no time for you to change lens. You can only use what’s mounted on the camera. In a lot of cases, that’d be a telephoto lens.

I faced this situation in my last trip to Mammoth Lakes. I was on location, shooting landscape photos. Suddenly, there’s a great background for portrait shoot. I didn’t want to change lens, so I shoot them with XF 55-200mm. As it turns out, XF 55-200mm is great for portrait!

The only thing you need is background isolation.
Many people think background isolation is shallow DoF and bokeh. While it’s not wrong, there are other ways to achieve it.
For example, the background compression by telephoto lens is also a way to achieve the isolation.

The above images were taken using XF 55-200mm. They are just as good as what I took with XF 56mm.

This was taken with XF 56mm. Fast lens still has its special use.

I still love my XF 56mm. It’s probably my all time favorite lens. However, I’m considering to bring only XF 55-200mm for my road trip to save some space and weight next time.

Filed Under: Photography, Portrait
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