Why 50mm Focal Length will mess up your face.

Following on from my earlier post comparing focal length's and full length figures I want to look at focal length and headshots. Again I see so many images wrecked by using the wrong focal length.

So, let me absolutely clear - the correct focal length for a portrait is around 100mm

This is shot at 105mm - everything is well proportion - she looks human :)

This is shot at 50mm and the proportions are drifting off - by comparing the two images you can see that things are not right at this focal length.

And to take it to the extreme - this is 24mm - obviously the distortions are greatly exaggerated - but the 50mm is still showing the same distortion just not as strongly.

So, never, never, ever use 50mm as a portrait lens and don't let anyone tell you that it's OK because it absolutely is not!

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