50mm V 85mm article. Portraits

LightEtching wrote in post #16957386
Errr... if you want to talk Classically then you have to include 135mm as well which was 'very' popular at one time and even special soft-focus versions were created.

More modern definitions include long telephotos.

Artistic photography tries not to use so many rules.

OTOH, so many classic definitions are driven by the typical shooting space available to pros engaged in the business of portraiture, where 135mm FL forced the camera to be back too far for the available indoor shooting space. Ergo, the names that vendors associated with 80-105mm as 'portrait lens' in their literature -- even today. Not MY definition, THEIRS! And it continues to confuse APS-C users who buy 105mm for their portrait lens ("..but Canon calls it a portrait lens!") and find it forces them too far back for their liking.

You conveniently seemed to ignore what I already said in the same post that you quoted, that I have used 135mm FL to very successfully shoot 'portraits' (and I was doing so back in the 1960's!), so even I am not bound by the hardliner definition, the labels imposed by Canon and others!

I am doing mostly two kinds of portraits:
full body + surroundings at 35mm
and from top of knees to the top of the head and a little bit more above at 85mm FF.

But you can also do the same with 135mm. Depends on what "view" you wanna achieve. You can do that also with 200mm. It's only the matter of idea, you have in your head. And use your head to do it properly so you will not get any annoying distortions.