Portrait Photography How To

Shooting portraits with a telephoto lens can be a very good idea. Long lenses help you isolate a subject by providing attractive compression while producing beautiful background blur, aka bokeh. But how long is too long of a lens to shoot a portrait with?

In the below video, photographer Manny Ortiz teams up with fellow YouTubers Irene Rudnyk and Gerald Undone to try to answer that question. The trio pairs a Sony 600mm F/4 lens with a Sony A6400 mirrorless camera, which uses an APS-C sensor with a 1.5x crop factor, to shoot portraits of a model at an effective focal length of 900mm. Sound like a crazy idea? It is.

In the video, each photographer has ten minutes to work with this outlandish lens-camera combo to photograph portraits of model Sasha. As you may have guessed, the photographers have to stand way, way back from their subject to even get her in the frame.

Check out the fun clip below to see how they fared. Let us know in the comments which photographer you think did the best with their 900mm portraits. You can watch more entertaining portrait photography videos on Ortiz's YouTube channel.