Great Lens For A Engagement Session D7000

BCordeiroPhotography · Oct 6, 2014

Hey everyone I have a engagement session oct 18 and I was wondering if anyone recommends a certain type of lens for engagement session. I will be using a d7000 I'm looking for very sharp image Quilty and fast focusing. If someone can please help me out here that would be great.

astroNikon · Oct 6, 2014

what's the budget ?
purchase (new or used) or rent?

do you know the area layout ... how far away/ close you can/will be to them?
This will help in determining focal length(s)

tirediron · Oct 6, 2014

Putting aside the contradiction of booking a session before possessing the equipment, there is no 'one lens' answer. I would expect to use everything from UWA to 200mm. What sort of images are you interested in capturing in particular? My 85mm 1.4 & 70-200 2.8 would likely see the most use, and, as always with gear questions: What's your budget?

sm4him · Oct 6, 2014

^What he said.

I'd take my 50mm f/1.4 on one camera body, and have my 70-200 f/2.8 on the other, and then bring along the widest prime I've currently got, which is a 28mm, just in case I want.

If I *were* going to pick up a new lens to shoot an engagement (or any other client-based) shoot with, I'd make sure I'd have it for plenty of time beforehand, to have plenty of time to make sure I know exactly how it performs, where it's sharpest, etc.

What lenses do you already have? Are you USED to shooting with a f/1.4, 1.8 or 2.8 aperture? The tendency when people get a lens with the ability to shoot at f/1.8 is that then they SHOOT at f/1.8, and they get nothing in focus except maybe the nose on the person closest to the camera.
If I were going to get a new lens for a shoot, I'd make sure I had it in plenty of time to do a lot of practice with it, so I'd know where it's sharpest, whether it has any focus issues, etc.

shadowlands · Oct 6, 2014

50mm f1.8
35mm f1.8

JoeW · Oct 6, 2014

I'm not trying to be snarky here but: the OP really needs to give us more details. Are you shooting inside (in residential space), in a studio, or outside? What will the light be like---will you be using soft boxes or just reflectors or just ambient light? What type of style or concept do you want to bring to the shoot? For instance, I shoot a lot with DoF extremes (especially wide-open). And I produce a lot of untraditional portraits that most couples would be unhappy with (but I make that clear going in).

What I can tell you is that in the last 4 portrait shoots that I did, the primary lens that I used for each one varied (a 50mm f1.4 prime shooting a lot at f2.0, a 200mm f2.8 zoom, a 18-70mm wide angle zoom...one shoot going mostly around 70mm and the other shoot with more focal range but probably on the shorter side around 30-40mm.). And each location and lighting arrangement was different.

Derrel · Oct 6, 2014

Pretty tough to answer. Any number of lenses could do the job, at various price points. Nikon's 16-85mm is a high-end option with a lot of range. Sigma's 17-50mm f/2.8 could do a decent job for far less money than the 17-55mm f/2.8 DX-Nikkor. You could use a 35mm f/1.8 DX and a 50mm f/1.8, both the lower-cost G-series models. If the light level is "good", meaning bright, there's nothing all that bad about a 55-200mm kit lens outdoors, or an 18-105 or 18-135mm, or whatever. Sigma's 24-105mm f/4 OS looks like a NICE lens, and is actually a useful length for an outdoors-centric general semi-wide to telephoto lens, sort of like the old 35-135mm zooms were 30 years ago on FX, but with a constant aperture of f/4, optical stabilizer, and autofocusing.

So, you have an engagement session coming up. That is really a two-person portraiture session. But you'll also own the lens for a long time after that set is shot and forgotten, so, pick a lens you'll want to have for a while, then buy that.

I see the longer 24-85 and 24-105 lenses, and even the CHEAP but SHARP discontinued Nikkor 28-105mm AF-D, as being useful, outdoor-centric zooms, even on APS-C bodies, because when short focal lengths are used on people, from close ranges, there are "issues" that easily creep up, like apparent perspective distortion, objectionable distorting of head shapes at the edges of the frame, weird size disparity between people in the front row and the second row of group shots, and so on, when the focal lengths are short (down in that 16-17-18mm end, especially!) and the camera-to-subject distances are close.

If you want "pretty" images, stay away from those really short,short focal length settings. Move BACK, away, and shoot at 35 to 85mm lengths.