Here are a couple portraits I shot last weekend. Lately I have been thinking a lot about what the ideal lens length for portraits would be on my Canon 60D. I have read that on a full frame camera anywhere from 70 to 100mm works well. So far my lens collection only includes a 50mm prime, and a 100-300mm telephoto zoom. With the 1.6x crop factor on my APS-C sized camera sensor, the field of view through the 50mm is more like 80mm on a full frame camera. That would be a good length for portraits, but a cropped 50 does not have the same compression and background blurring abilities of a true 80mm lens. My other lens, at its widest, has the same field of view as a 160mm lens on a full frame camera. That’s a bit long for shooting portraits. You’ve got to be outdoors with plenty of space. Luckily, that ‘s exactly where I was last weekend, so I gave it a try. The longer length of the 100-300mm compresses space nicely, and provides a shallower depth of field at smaller apertures. Both of these images were shot with the 100-300mm. It’s not as sharp as my 50mm, but I learned that it’s a passable option under the right conditions.