As a short-focus lens, the 85mm prime lens puts you in the middle of the action while making the background look closer than it is.  With its excellent bokeh ability, your theme stands out.  With this focal length, what you see is what you get.  Learn about the 85mm prime lens in this guide.  

1. Why use an 85mm prime lens?  

Getting close to the subject and filling in the frame is a standard composition technique that every style of photography takes seriously, and 85mm focal length easily fills the viewfinder with the subject.  The short 85mm lens easily covers all types of photography.  Everyone thinks it’s the perfect shot for portraits and weddings, but it’s also perfect for sports and action shots.  Using the camera’s 85mm lens, you can stroll through city streets for candid portraits, or spend time in nature photographing wildlife.  

2. Advantages of 85mm prime lens  

Like that dreamy blur, it seems to turn into 85mm buttery nice.  

Even if you shoot at wide apertures — which just means smaller apertures like 1.2, 1.4, 1.8, 2.0 — you’ll get more bokeh than 50, 85.  

You can still get a good depth of field with 50, but as far as cream bokeh is concerned, nothing goes above 85mm.  

The 85mm lens has a much longer focus time than any other lens I’ve used.  Because of that, it forces you to slow down and become conscious.  If you can leave enough space between you and your subject, this lens is great for people.  

3. Three common uses of the 85mm prime lens  

(1) Portrait  

The 85mm lens is a classic portrait focal segment.  When you are flush with your subject’s head, there is no distortion of your facial features and it is good to separate the subject from the background.  The wide aperture of this prime lens adds plenty of bokeh around the subject, so the viewer is never in doubt about where to look.  When used at maximum aperture, the 85mm prime lens produces the exaggerated depth of field everyone loves because it turns a busy background into a soft and colorful blur.  

(2) Landscape photography  

Landscape photography usually doesn’t consider using an 85mm lens, but in some cases, it can be useful.  It doesn’t give you a traditional view of the landscape, but it can help you see some detailed features of a location.  This short-focus lens brings the scene closer to you, filling the picture in a way that a wide-angle lens can’t dream of.  Another advantage of this lens is that it removes unwanted or distracting elements from the lens.  If there are fences, roads, or people in the foreground, you can shoot directly over them to capture the subject in the distance.  

Remember the best position on an 85mm lens.  Do not use the narrowest aperture to try to capture all the details of the scene, as most lenses will lose sharpness at the extreme end of the aperture range.  Find the best spot for the clearest image and use that aperture when shooting the landscape with a telephoto lens.  An f/8 or F /11 aperture will usually give you the best results.  This setting also has the advantage of letting more light in, so you can use faster shutter speeds to overcome camera shake.  

(3) Wild animals  

Although the 85mm is known for great portraits and wedding shots, its short focus means it’s also very useful for shooting wildlife.  Compared to wider lenses, you can take close-ups of wildlife without putting yourself in danger.  And because its focal length is not as long as traditional telephoto lenses, it can keep the animal’s environment in its environment.  This is very important in wildlife photography because people like to see the “home” of the animals involved.