$300 or lower lens for people photography

[Vic Vinegar]

Thanks everyone for your answers. I actually do have to keep my budget at about $200. I probably should have clarified that we're not expecting these to be perfect pictures by any means. My friends just want photos that I take for sentimental reasons. I didn't mean to make it sound like this was a professional gig by any means. They will probably hire a professional for their actual wedding photos even though they want me to be there with my camera too just to take more personal candid photos of all of us. But yeah I probably made this sound like a bigger issue than it is. Their big thing was that they don't want this to be a burden on me and they want it all to be fun and if the photos don't come out great that's no big deal. That being said, I want to treat this as if it were a professional gig and I want to do my best work for them regardless. I like buying lenses on eBay because there's a huge market for used lenses there and I've never had a bad experience with the 3 lenses I bought on there. I'm still open to any and all advice so let's keep this thread alive with any tips or suggestions for lenses.

 

[beagle100]

Thanks everyone for your answers. I actually do have to keep my budget at about $200. I probably should have clarified that we're not expecting these to be perfect pictures by any means. My friends just want photos that I take for sentimental reasons. I didn't mean to make it sound like this was a professional gig by any means. They will probably hire a professional for their actual wedding photos even though they want me to be there with my camera too just to take more personal candid photos of all of us. But yeah I probably made this sound like a bigger issue than it is. Their big thing was that they don't want this to be a burden on me and they want it all to be fun and if the photos don't come out great that's no big deal. That being said, I want to treat this as if it were a professional gig and I want to do my best work for them regardless. I like buying lenses on eBay because there's a huge market for used lenses there and I've never had a bad experience with the 3 lenses I bought on there. I'm still open to any and all advice so let's keep this thread alive with any tips or suggestions for lenses.

for people shots the 85mm 1.8 is probably your best option, look for a used copy

 

[TCampbell]

If keeping it under $200 is a hard rule, then there's only one lens... the new EF 50mm f/1.8 STM. (must be STM -- not the old f/1.8).

The reason is that in portraits, it's nice to have a tack-sharp subject and a blurred background -- which you can easily do at low focal ratios. But the old 50mm f/1.8 had a 5-blade aperture and wasn't well-rounded. This made all points blur into pentagonal shapes and the overlap created a very strange blur effect that some describe as "jittery" or "nervous" -- but not creamy smooth.

The high-end L series lenses intended for portraits create VERY smooth and creamy bokeh (so rich and creamy that you get type II diabetes just looking at the photos) -- but none of those lenses cost less than $200 (few L series lenses cost less than $1000).

But Canon redesigned the 50mm f/1.8 lens and while the optics are the same, the aperture blades are not... they went from a 5-blade pentagonal aperture to a 7-blade aperture that is smoother and this had quite a noticeable improvement on the blur.