The best lenses for wedding and portrait photography depends on what part of a wedding story you’re trying to capture. The lens can be more important than the camera itself as it determines the final image quality.
There area hundreds of lens review websites that you can check out but I just want to focus, (pardon the pun), on which Nikon lenses I use for specific photos when it come to documenting a wedding story.
- Nikon 24-70mm Zoom. All round general purpose lens, beautifully sharp with a wide angel 24mm for those candid moments and large group shots to the close up 70mm for portraits. I generally use this lens when I want more of the background in focus.
- Nikon 85mm Prime Lens: My main lens for individual portraits. Unlike a zoom, Prime lenses have a fixed focal length, which generally deliver superior quality to zooms. With its larger aperture, the 85mm create dreamy out-of-focus backgrounds, which is perfect for portrait photography. It’s the king of background blur, or boken. which makes your subject pop. It also compresses any prominent facial features, like noses and chins for a bit of added flattery.
- Nikon 50mm Prime Lens: Same advantages as its 85mm cousin but wider. Used for 50% of my candid wedding photography and great for full-length portraits. There is no magnifications with a 50mm lens so it’s like looking through you own eyes. With no zoom, it makes me move in and around to find the best composition and angle. Also brilliant in low light churches and wedding receptions with it’s maximum 1.4 aperture.
- Nikon 70-200mm Telephoto Lens: This lens is my little baby for capturing those candid moments from a distance when no one is aware you’re there. I love using it at its 200mm magnification, to create a shallow depth of field to blurring out the background, isolate my subject and move other elements of the photo closer to fill the frame.
I’ve always been of the opinion if you own a Canon or Nikon use their lenses as they are designed to give you the best results from their cameras.