last week, i made an executive decision. i have been doing a lot of portrait photography lately, and i’ve taken on a new high-profile client for event photography. i already have a tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-4 zoom that works on the wide end of my range, and i have a canon 50mm f/1.8 stm lens that works for my mid-range. now, i also have a tamron 70-210mm f/4 lens, which is awesome for some of my portrait work, but when it comes to low-light photography, it’s dang near useless.

i’ve been contacted about some photo work in recent weeks that requires me to have full coverage of the 18mm through 85mm range, and while it’s ridiculous to think that a lack of 35mm to 49mm or 51mm to 69mm would be consequential in the least since that difference can be handled by taking a single step toward the subject of the photograph. regardless of the ignorance behind that requirement, i thought it would be good to shoot two birds with one lens. i found a used tamron af 28-75mm f/2.8 xr di ld aspherical (if) lens from b&h photo that seemed to fit the bill. after a lot of research on youtube, i decided to go for it, and i picked the lens up last week on my day off. but after a couple of uses, i realized that it was not going to work. the images that the lens produced were too soft to be useful in most cases, and it produced significant chromatic aberration when wide open, and when combined with even moderate iso in the 3200 range, images became too soft to be usable.

now, it’s not fair to completely trash this lens. it actually produced one of my favorite street portraits so far, and the softness of the lens was actually pleasing under the right circumstances - on an overcast day, lit by high-quality lighting designed by the experts at one of fifth avenue’s most affluent retailers. i’ll include one of the images below.

so, realizing that my search wasn’t over, i started doing more research, and came to the conclusion that i would be better served with a fast telephoto prime lens. so i decided to shoot two different birds. i realized that as much as i love my nifty fifty lens, it’s not really all that well-suited to portraiture, and that a lens of the 85mm, 105mm or 135mm focal length would be much better. part of the reason is that lenses wider than 85mm tend to cause subjects to look wider than they are in real life - and when you think about the fact that 35mm cameras were the most popular consumer focal length for a very long time, the old adage that the camera adds ten pounds actually makes sense. i would love to pick up a canon 135mm f/2 lens, because it’s known for it’s amazing sharpness and it would really add a majorly different focal length to my arsenal. but the problem is that the 135mm i want is too expensive for me to just buy off the cuff at around $800. in the 105mm focal length, the best available is the sigma 105mm f/1.4 art lens, and i may eventually get it, but that one is even more expensive, at around $1,300. so both of those lenses are out, and there’s no point in getting a lens that i am not absolutely in love with.

so that brings me to the 85mm focal length. there are three canon 85mm prime lenses, the f/1.8, the f/1.4 is, and the f/1.2. the best lens in this length is the f/1.4 is since it has image stabilization, but it’s too expensive. and the f/1.2 would be great to really open up my low-light abilities. but that one is way too much for me, too. so that left me with the canon f/1.8 usm lens, which runs for $400 including tax brand new. considering that the tamron 28-75mm af f/2.8 ended up costing $360 with tax.

so after putting a lot of thought into it, i bought the canon 85mm f/1.8 usm. that same day, i ended up having a portrait session with one of my regulars, and so i slapped on the new glass, and hit the streets.

it was a pretty bright day, and we met in the mid-afternoon, so for the most part, there was a good amount of ambient light around without it being overly bright. but something came to my attention as a result of the light conditions. in areas of some of my photos where there was extremely bright sky, my lens picked up a huge amount of chromatic aberration in the bokeh blur sections of the photos when wide open at f/1.8. so that is something i need to watch out for. honestly it’s not that debilitating because in instances where there’s that much light available, i don’t need to keep the lens wide open, and by the time i stopped down to f/2.8 in a later test, the aberration was completely gone.

the thing is, when i’m shooting in low light, i don’t need to worry about chromatic aberration, and in case it does rear its ugly head from time to time, i can always shoot some safety shots at f/2.8, underexpose them, and bring up the exposure in post. so for now, i’m pretty sure i solved my problems. but if for some reason this new lens doesn’t do the trick, i’m going to have to return it and come up with another solution.