85mm or 50mm for portraits?

What is the best lens for portrait photography?

If you do a lot of headshots, 85mm is probably the better choice. You can capture beautiful, tight images from a reasonable distance, whereas headshots at 50mm can put you uncomfortably close. On the other hand, if you gravitate toward full-body or even group shots, 50mm is ideal. The 50mm will give you that extra field of view (width of image).

If you have a tight budget, then a 50mm F2.8 is likely to be more affordable than its 85mm counterpart. A second hand ‘nifty fifty’ for a full frame camera will set you back around £130 whereas a 85mm F2.8 will likely cost double that.

My ‘go to’ portrait lens is the Nikon 85mm F1.8 AFS. I get beautiful bokeh and consistently sharp images from the centre right out to the edges.