Changes In Portrait Styles Over Time

[VidThreeNorth]

I propose this as a "beer and pretzels" topic. It is something to worth discussing over beer and pretzels. Don't blame me if nobody else is interested. That's what the beer and pretzels are for.

Anyway, going back to the cut film days, a few types of portraits became standard faire for working photographers. There were the standing full height, sitting, and head and shoulders. And we eventually called lenses used for head and shoulders shots "portrait lenses".

Eventually, when 35mm cameras became popular, the 35mm camera lens that took on this name was the 85 mm lens. Now, if you use that lens in the way that the name implies, it is associated with head and shoulders pictures taken in a specific range of distances. I have said before that I think it worked out to about 6' - 8', but I haven't checked that lately. If you have someone to point a camera at, then you can check it and report back.

Anyway, in a recent discussion topic:

"People lenses"
People lenses

a couple of posts alluded to the fact that some portrait photographers were using much longer lenses and longer subject distances, while others noted that they liked closer pictures, which would need wider lenses.


Here is my theory:

I think that the move to longer lenses probably started when movies and eventually television became popular. Movies in particular tended to keep the cameras farther away because it was easier to just change lenses (using rotating arrays of lenses -- not zooms) than to move the camera. And then later, yes, zooms came along and it became even easier to change focal lengths than to move a camera.

When TV came along this trend continued for the same reason. Moving a camera is difficult, but zooming is easy. So cameras stay away (often off the set) and the camera operator just zooms to crop.

The result is that we are more accustomed to seeing people from a distance than we were before. And so longer distances became acceptable for portraits and have been used more often. This probably became evident after the 1970's because artistically such photography lagged.

Anyway, moving forward to today, we see more and more pictures taken with GoPro style action cameras and cell phones. And of necessity, and lack of skill, lots and lots of pictures were
taken at nearer distances. Having been flooded with these images, we now accept them as "normal" and they have become more acceptable. I think this happened much more rapidly due to the Internet. The change in our acceptance of such
compositions probably happened over the span from around 6 years ago down to about 3 years ago, which is an amazingly fast change.

Anyway, that is all I have to say -- "food fight time!"

 

[Dave442]

I would think that the portrait shot can be taken to either focus the viewer on the subject or to give a sense of place to the subject. A movie can show a sense of place with a wide shot and then cut to the tight shots. In photography, the studio shots are typically tight as there is just a cloth background - with the cell phone images and especially go-pro images I think people generally want to give a sense of place (I'm here!, and here!, and now here!).

Today I wish I had my 35mm along as I had to stand on the far side of the pool to get a shot with a few people and also show part of the location.

 

[Derrel]

I think the move to longer lenses corresponded in large part with the development of "system" type 35mm SLR cameras in the 1970's and the 1980's. The 35mm rangefinder type of camera, medium-format rollfilm cameras (twin-lens beginning in 1928,and press-type rangefinder rollfilm cameras, and later 120 rollfilm SLR types), and 4x5 inch sheet film cameras--all of those camera types had pretty limited models of long-length lenses. The 35mm rangefinder camera's longest common length was 90mm, with a few,rarely-seen, 135mm lenses available. In twin-lens reflex, a 58mm x 58mm camera frame was typically exposed with the one, permanent lens on the camera, either a 75mm or an 80mm normal lens. So, there were really not all the lens length choice we have today.

Beginning in the late 1970's and into the 80's, 35mm SLR cameras were reaching the peak of popularity, and for the first time, 300mm lenses,and long zooms like 70-200,70-205, and a few oddballs like 60-250,etc.. were pretty common. Nikon invented its IF or internal focusing long lenses in the mid-1970's, making two-finger, feather-touch focusing using a very small group of internal focusing elements, to facilitate rapid, almost effortless manual focusing, and the 300mm f/4.5 ED~IF made a light, compact, easily hand-holdable 300mm,and ultra-smooth focusing lens a reality. BOOM! No more big, heavy, slow-focusing, helicoid-cranking on 300 or 400mm telephotos....nope...finally, long telephoto lenses that were SUPER-easy to focus!

I agree, today we are seeing a lot more GoPro type images, and LOADS of semi-wide-angle cellphone images of people. The most common and most commonly-used cameras are sort of era-specific. One point you made about sheet film cameras: the Graflex company had camera manuals that told users _exactly_ how far away to stand and to focus when using various lenses, in order to get specific person sizes, like full-length, half body, head and shoulder, etc. All described and systematized in the camera instruction manuals, for the several, but few, lens focal lengths commonly used on 4x5 sheet film cameras.

One thing too: with larger format cameras like 4x5 and to a lesser extent 120 rollfilm cameras, the negatives were so big that darkroom crop-ins were pretty common. With 35mm film's small 24x36mm capture size, cropping older films was much less-acceptable, and so, longer focal length lenses were more critical and more-desired than when the older,larger-formats were king.

Today? We have loads of affordable,light, stabilized 70-200 and 70-300 lenses, and the super-tele 200mm f/2 and 300mm f/2.8 lenses are around, and have superlative image rendering capabilities. "Blowing out the background" was fashionable in the 1980's, which is when the 300mm f/2.8 telephoto first became commonly available, but expensive. Nikon's 180mm f/2.8 ED lens was a much more-common, and very easy-to-use portrait lens that was VERY popular with Nikon shooters in the 1980's.

We've really got a lot of fine,fine lenses now. In the 1970's, lens choices were fewer,and more pedestrian. Before the 1970's, 35mm systems had fewer long lens choices, and medium format lenses were often 80mm,150,and 250mm, so, not nearly as much pure lens length, but more crop-in capability from the typical 150mm f/4 lens.

 

[compur]

As Derrel points out, it was the advent of reflex viewing cameras (SLRs, etc) that made it practical to use longer (and wider) lenses than had been used previously due to the practical limits imposed by the use of non-reflex type viewfinders.

In general, longer lenses are often used for portraits because they produce a more pleasing perspective as regards facial features while wide lenses used close up tend to produce less pleasing results.

The first reflex viewing movie cameras were pioneered by Arri and began being used in Hollywood in the late 1940s.

BTW, Hollywood generally only uses zoom lenses when actual zooming is called for during the shot. Otherwise, only primes are used.

 

[Designer]

The result is that we are more accustomed to seeing people from a distance than we were before. And so longer distances became acceptable for portraits and have been used more often. This probably became evident after the 1970's because artistically such photography lagged.

I think the reason for longer lenses is because people just look better (more natural) with some distance between, and they knew about this phenomenon before the advent of movies and television.

Anyway, moving forward to today, we see more and more pictures taken with GoPro style action cameras and cell phones. And of necessity, and lack of skill, lots and lots of pictures were taken at nearer distances.

For people who don't notice or don't care about distortion, close shots with wide lenses are "good enough".