Best portrait lens

[Talnar]

Good day! Which lens for a Sony APS-C camera with a price range between 400-500 euros do you recommend? I know that sigma 56mm is a good choice, but are there any other options available?

[Pieter]

The Sony 50mm f/1.8 OSS (the APS-C version, not fullframe!) is pretty decent. I've had both and although the Sony is nice, the Sigma is really much better: tack sharp wide open and negligible LoCA. The Sony is quite mediocre when it comes to LoCA, but cheaper and has stabilisation.

[Oliver in New Zealand]

The Zeiss Touit 50mm is nice but this is not a focal length I use. I do portraits with a 50mm (ish) eq or something like a 100mm eq. lens. The FF 85mm f1.8 is very nice on APSC for portraits. 

 

Oliver

[XKAES]

I'd look for a zoom in the 40-80mm range.  With one focal length, all you can vary is your distance to the subject.  But with a zoom you can more easily take a full figure portrait or a close-up facial.

[Pieter]

12 hours ago, Oliver in New Zealand said:

The Zeiss Touit 50mm is nice

With all due respect, this is bad advise: OP mentioned a price range of 400-500 Euro's. The Touit is much more expensive and doesn't offer anything over the cheaper Sony and Sigma options: it's not any sharper, doesn't have OSS, has a much smaller aperture and has very busy background blur. Unless you're planning to take portraits with screen filling nostrils, freckles etc there's no reason to pick this option.

Anyway, please don't revive old threads made by leechers like this guy.

[thebeardedgroundsman]

Pieter,

Perhaps you'd like to explain what LoCA stands for - for the "newbies"and others.

[XKAES]

1 hour ago, thebeardedgroundsman said:

Pieter,

Perhaps you'd like to explain what LoCA stands for - for the "newbies"and others.

Excellent point.  IMHO, abbreviations are largely a real PITA.  LMAO

Edited March 21, 2021 by XKAES

[Pieter]

2 hours ago, thebeardedgroundsman said:

Perhaps you'd like to explain what LoCA stands for

LoCA stands for Longitudinal Chromatic Abberation (I hope you understand now why an abbreviation is used). It's a type of optical defect especially present in large aperture lenses: it causes a color shift behind/in front of the plane of focus. This results in a magenta 'halo' or hue in objects behind the plane of focus, and a green tint in objects in front of the plane of focus. High contrast/shiny objects like chrome/metal are especially affected by this and it's very difficult to properly correct in post without loss of color.

Some lenses, like the much acclaimed Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8, suffer badly from LoCA:

https://www.lenstip.com/483.5-Lens_review-Sony_Carl_Zeiss_Sonnar_T*_FE_55_mm_f_1.8_ZA_Chromatic_and_spherical_aberration.html

https://opticallimits.com/sonyalphaff/965-zeiss55f18?start=1

In some extreme cases, it can render an image pretty much useless:

https://phillipreeve.net/blog/sony-fe-1-855-za-sonnar-t-review/#Chromatic_Aberrations

Edited March 21, 2021 by Pieter

[XKAES]

Minolta made several MAXXUM A-Mount auto-focusing zooms in the 35-70mm and 35-80mm full-frame format.  Used, these sell for $20-40.  I don't know anything about adapting them to the E-mount cameras, but adapters are made.