Canon

Canon Inc.

is a Japanese multinational corporation that specialises in the manufacture of imaging and optical products, including cameras, camcorders, photocopiers, steppers and computer printers. Its headquarters are located in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan.-Origins:...

 makes several lenses for the EF lens mount

Canon EF lens mount

Introduced in 1987, the EF lens mount is the standard lens mount on the Canon EOS family of SLR film and digital cameras. EF stands for "Electro-Focus": automatic focusing on EF lenses is handled by a dedicated electric motor built into the lens...

 and EF-S lens mount

Canon EF-S lens mount

The EF-S lens mount is a derivative of the EF lens mount created for a subset of Canon digital single-lens reflex cameras with APS-C sized image sensors. It was released in 2003. Cameras supporting the EF-S mount are backward-compatible with the EF lens mount and, as such, have a flange focal...

 that are well-suited for portrait photography

Portrait photography

Portrait photography or portraiture is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people , in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject...

. These lenses may also be used for other purposes, often being suited for indoor sports photography

Sports photography

Sports photography refers to the genre of photography that covers all types of sports.In the majority of cases, professional sports photography is a branch of photojournalism, while amateur sports photography, such as photos of children playing association football, is a branch of vernacular...

 as well, due to suitable focal length and wide aperture, though autofocus speed is an issue in sports photography that is less important in portraiture.

Criteria

Lenses suited for traditional portrait photography are medium telephoto lenses, in the 85mm-135mm range, which provide the desired perspective distortion

Perspective distortion (photography)

In photography and cinematography, perspective distortion is a warping or transformation of an object and its surrounding area that differs significantly from what the object would look like with a normal focal length, due to the relative scale of nearby and distant features...

 in head and shoulders shots (compressing facial features), and have fast aperture

Lens speed

Lens speed refers to the maximum aperture diameter, or minimum f-number, of a photographic lens. A lens with a larger maximum aperture is a fast lens because it delivers more light intensity to the focal plane, allowing a faster shutter speed...

, of 2.8 or faster, to allow shallow depth of field

Depth of field

In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image...

, focusing attention on the subject.

One can use other lenses, either with shorter focal length (particularly for full body shots), or longer focal length (particularly in fashion photography

Fashion photography

Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items. Fashion photography is most often conducted for advertisements or fashion magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, or Elle...

, to increase the flattening effect, or in very cropped facial shots). Other lenses can be used for artistic effect; one could use a fisheye lens

Fisheye lens

In photography, a fisheye lens is a wide-angle lens that takes in a broad, panoramic and hemispherical image. Originally developed for use in meteorology to study cloud formation and called "whole-sky lenses", fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted...

, for instance, though this is considered neither traditional nor flattering.

Lenses

Lenses that fit these criteria on a full-frame camera are:

• EF 85mm 1.2L II
• EF 85mm 1.8
• EF 100mm 2
• EF 100mm 2.8 Macro
• EF 135mm 2L
• EF 135mm 2.8 with Softfocus

The EF 135mm 2.8 with Softfocus is of particular note, as it includes soft focus

Soft focus

In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while retaining sharp edges; it is not the same as an...

, which is often a desirable effect in glamour photography

Glamour photography

Glamour photography is a genre of photography whereby the subjects, usually female, are portrayed in a romantic or sexually alluring way. The subjects may be fully clothed or seminude, but glamour photography stops short of deliberately arousing the viewer and being pornographic photography.Glamour...

.

APS-C

When used with DSLRs with cropped sensors, notably the APS-C

APS-C

Advanced Photo System type-C is an image sensor format approximately equivalent in size to the Advanced Photo System "classic" size negatives...

-sized sensor with 1.6 crop factor

Crop factor

In digital photography, a crop factor is related to the ratio of the dimensions of a camera's imaging area compared to a reference format; most often, this term is applied to digital cameras, relative to 35 mm film format as a reference. In the case of digital cameras, the imaging device would be a...

 (such as the popular Canon EOS 400D

Canon EOS 400D

The EOS 400D, called Digital Rebel XTi in North America and EOS Kiss Digital X in Japan, is a mid-range digital single-lens reflex camera introduced by Canon August 24, 2006....

 (also known as the "Digital Rebel XTi" or "EOS Kiss Digital X"), one instead uses 50mm–85mm lenses, as these provide a 35 mm equivalent focal length

35 mm equivalent focal length

In photography, the 35 mm equivalent focal length is a measure that indicates the angle of view of a particular combination of a camera lens and film or sensor size...

 of 80mm–136mm.

Lenses that fit these criteria are:

• EF 50mm lenses
  Canon EF 50mm lens
  The EF 50mm lenses are a group of normal prime lenses made by Canon that share the same focal length. These lenses are based on the classic double-Gauss lens, with the f/1.8 being a standard six-element double-Gauss with an air gap and powers between element 2 and 3 and its faster cousins adding...
  
   (1.2, 1.4, 1.8 II, 2.5 Compact Macro)
• EF-S 60mm 2.8 Macro
  Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens
  The Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens is Canon's only EF-S macro lens, and also its only EF-S prime lens. Because it can only be used on cameras with a 1.6x crop factor, it is the equivalent of a 96mm lens mounted on a 35mm format camera...
  
  
• EF 85mm 1.2L II
• EF 85mm 1.8