Taking Portaits help

[itoncool]

400mm probably acceptable if you're using Full Frame camera.
But, I'm still not comfortable with the distance, maybe just not my style, because I want to talk to the model and interact with her (or him).

My range for portraiture is 70-200mm on Full Frame.

 

[sabbath999]

The 50mm 1.8 is a nice lens, for the money.

I don't know if you are Canon or Nikon.

The Canon 50 1.4 looks to me (looking through the glass case) to be a lot better built than the 1.8, but people here rave about the 1.8's image quality and it costs the same as pizza and a movie, so I would go with that.

I have shot with both the 1.8 and 1.4 50mm Nikons, and didn't notice any difference in build quality between the two, or in image quality... so you are strictly paying for the faster stop. Nothing wrong with paying for faster glass, but me? I chose the 1.8.