5 Unconventional Lenses for Wedding and Portrait Photography

Just like any other genre of photography, portraiture is a creative field that knows no bounds. There are no rules dictating how a portrait needs to be made, how it needs to look, or more specifically, how it was shot. On the other hand, photographers love to categorize and label things based on “best” and “typical” usage situations (and I’m certainly guilty of doing this). One of the labels that bothers me is the term, “portrait lens.” I think most photographers would have a decent sense of what kind of lens I’d be referring to if I wrote “taken with a portrait lens.” Most of the time, most people would think I’d be referring to a short to medium telephoto lens or longer focal length lens; something longer than “normal” (there’s another one of those brilliant labels) but still wide enough to give a sense of environment and context. And to pigeon-hole it even further, many people would immediately think of an 85mm f/1.4. Even though I think many of us share this sense of reductionism, we also know that a portrait can be made with any focal length, or any lens, for that matter. Here’s a look at five lenses that I’d call unconventional portrait lenses.

Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 Di III VXD

I love to be contradictory, especially with the first lens in an article like this, but I’m going to include the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 Di III VXD here because I truly believe it is an unconventional lens that excels at portraiture. If you break this lens down, it makes perfect sense as to why it’s a good match for portraits: longer-than-normal focal lengths and a fast design. However, the fact the it’s a single zoom puts it in a unique place, even when compared to other wide-to-tele zooms. Compared to a 24-70mm, or even something like a 24-120mm, it’s actually a more useful lens since the entire zoom range is useful for wedding applications. The 35mm position is great for quick group shots and a more reportage style and the 150mm position is great for isolating subjects at a distance. And then there’s the added benefit of a starting f/2 position, making it a faster lens at the wide end than other zooms. It’s a unique lens for sure, a weirdly a perfect fit for wedding shooters, and might even entice some to photograph a whole wedding with a single lens.

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