Portrait Photography | The Secret for Getting Razor Sharp Photos With 50 mm Lens

© 2014 Wazari Wazir | Portrait of Arianna My Daughter | ISO 400 | f/2 | 1/160 | 50 mm

“Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multimedia montage, the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected.”

– Ralph Gibson –

I’m quite busy this past few days, actually I’m very busy this month, and hardly have any time left to photograph my family but this late afternoon I took the chance to photograph my little daughter Arianna. The photograph above were taken with my trusted 50 mm f/1.4 lens. Anyway this morning while busy covering the rehearsal of the upcoming Malaysia 57th Independence Day Celebration at Independence Square Kuala Lumpur, I met one of my Facebook friend asking me about 50 mm lens.

To cut the things short, we were talking about shutter speed, aperture and ISO, some  basic setting about photography and I told him that among the most important factor that must be taken into consideration when using 50 mm lens at wide aperture like f/1.8 or f/2 is to use very fast shutter speed especially if we are hand holding the camera.

Normally I will never use a shutter speed any lower than 1/100 when photographing my children, simply because they never know how to stand still for a few second, always on the move. It was very late afternoon when I took the photograph above and in order for me to be able to use faster shutter speed, I need to increase the ISO to 400, at first I try to use ISO 200 but then in order for me to properly exposed the images I need to use shutter speed around 1/60 sec and I know that won’t gonna work, unless I’m photographing a statue.

*Note : Using smaller aperture like f/8 or f/22 and using lower ISO will definitely add up to the sharpness of the photograph  but if you are using 50 mm lens for portrait work with large aperture like f/2, then you really need to pay closer attention to the shutter speeds that you are using.

Actually I’ve written  quite a long blog post about this subject already. Maybe you can visit my previous blog post HERE for more information.