a landscape camera vs a sports camera vs a portrait camera?

From my own perspective:

A landscaper likes to have all the megapixels he can get so he can shoot wide and still have beautiful detail if you view the photo in great zoom.

A sports shooter likes to have a high frame rate to capture all the fast movement he can.

What camera qualities would a portrait shooter want?

chuckmiller wrote in post #19107990
What camera qualities would a portrait shooter want?

Any camera that can interact with lighting and good subject matter and posing technique.

The camera matters the least in portrait.

Very best,

Portrait camera...needs a user who

• can best light the subject to flatter them the most, and
  
• can pose the subject in the most flattering manner.
  
• uses the flattering distance from camera-to-subject, NOT 'too close' nor 'too far away' to achieve facial flattery
  

Light and lens mean more than the camera for portraits. But with that being said the things that make for a great landscape camera usually also serve to make a great portrait camera. Megapixels help when selling big portraits and full frame certainly can help achieve the shallow dof look that many want. Many of the classic portrait lenses are were designed for FF although they work fine on a crop camera it changes the working distance and field of view.

Are portraiture shooters benefiting from the 50MP of the 5DS?

chuckmiller wrote in post #19108013
Are portraiture shooters benefiting from the 50MP of the 5DS?

The 5DS specification is 8688 x 5792...if the client wanted a 16" x 20" print, that would be providing 362 pixels per inch in the short direction. So if the client wanted to be able to sit with a manifying glass and look into the pores of this/her skin at that size, the 5DS would indeed be beneficial!

If the client merely wanted to look at his/her 16x20 portrait from a more normal 20" away, a Canon 40D would probably be good enough, because at that viewing distance the human eye is incapable of seeing any finer detail!

chuckmiller wrote in post #19108013
Are portraiture shooters benefiting from the 50MP of the 5DS?

Maybe the few who have clients that actually buy large prints. Otherwise, not really, no. 99% of portraits these days is social media sharing, low resolution, viewed on a tiny handheld screen, so doesn't even matter.

Very best,

I would like a camera they works with multiple flashes aa you will want to control the light, you’ll need to able to use a flash indoors as well as outdoors

flyfisher wrote in post #19109180
I would like a camera they works with multiple flashes aa you will want to control the light, you’ll need to able to use a flash indoors as well as outdoors

...however, setting lighting ratios in the blind (no constant modelling light) is not conducive to subject flattery... almost all of us have facial imperfections of some sort, which skillful lighting placement can de-emphasize. Methinks most 'portraitists' today hardly are as skilled as the pro portraitists of yesteryear, in that regard.

Indeed, it IS possible to shoot and chimp to hide the imperfections, but that prolongs the shooting session for the portrait client, which is not a fun session for everyone to endure! Less wasted time = more pleasant experience.

Super high resolution portraits can very much a double edged sword. Not sure everyone wants to be able to see every skin blemish in high detail. Also, extreme shallow depth of field is not what most commercial portrait photographers use. Very thin DoF can cause more issues than it solves. With eye focus becoming popular, its less so. But shallow DoF is a way over used technique that you don't need hyper expensive glass to do portraits.

Here is an example from 500px

https://500px.com …/-by-Alexander-Vinogradov

Shot at f9. Assuming you really want to do portraits, your lighting options are much more critical. Next, being able to control the environment will reduce the need to blur the backgrounds as much.

One of my favorite kits for street portraits was a Canon 7D with the reliable 85 f1.8. If you do a head shot with an 85mm on a crop body, you can have the eye in focus, and loose focus on the ears or even tip of nose. Very seldom do you ever need, nor even want DoF that narrow. If f1.8 can be too narrow, f1.4 or f1.2 are even more extreme.

I do most of my portrait work at f2.8.. gives you generous margin for error, and still provides very good subject isolation F4 works very well as well...

Net net though... yes, a good landscape camera will also be a good portrait camera. The lighting control has little to do with the camera body. So don't over spend. If I were trying to get my feet wet, I wold go for a used 5D mk-something, 6D, or Sony A7r Mk II, or a used Nikon 800 or 850 ( I think, I don't know the Nikon line very well). Focus speed is irrelevant. Use the extra money on a decent lens, and the rest learning lighting... assuming you haven't mastered it already.

another example of lighting being more important

https://500px.com …-Light--by-Arthur-Talkins

Look through the images on 500px.. most have exif in tact and you can learn a lot from how others did their work.... cheers and good luck.... sounds like fun

I am not a full time portrait shooter (ironically, we are doing some this evening), but I look at it this way.

I want as much as a camera can give me, and then it's left up to me to provide whatever limits I want. So I would take a 50Mpx image any time for portraits, and then I can resample down as needed, I can post process some things out in the large resolution, and then after resampling, the results are even better, etc.

It is easier to shrink what a camera can produce down than it is to make something out of nothing later with a less capable camera.

In other words, I want to be the limit to my results, not my gear, resolution, fine detail, no matter what.

How big are the prints you are making that you would need a 50px image? Just wondering. Now if you are doing portraits, your talking low volume so spending hours on post is surely justified. That said, I know of very few photographers that have those kinds of requirements, simply because I focus on PJ work.

But team... how large are the prints you are making? In the past people used to get those large framed family portraits, but it seems the demand for those has gone down some. Are you doing much beyond 20" to 24" prints?

My favorite sized file is about 24mpx... computer handles it very quickly. I see the lag produced if I use my a7r III in my workflow. Then again, I am burdened by volume rather than a single "perfect" image. Just wondering.... sorry for the hi-jack.

Croasdail wrote in post #19109433
How big are the prints you are making that you would need a 50px image? Just wondering. Now if you are doing portraits, your talking low volume so spending hours on post is surely justified. That said, I know of very few photographers that have those kinds of requirements, simply because I focus on PJ work.

But team... how large are the prints you are making? In the past people used to get those large framed family portraits, but it seems the demand for those has gone down some. Are you doing much beyond 20" to 24" prints?

My favorite sized file is about 24mpx... computer handles it very quickly. I see the lag produced if I use my a7r III in my workflow. Then again, I am burdened by volume rather than a single "perfect" image. Just wondering.... sorry for the hi-jack.

I rarely print large (20x30 is the largest right now), but again, I wouldn't be buying a camera just for portraits. I would be using this for a wide range of applications.

Even if I were just doing portraits, having the resolution does several things:
- Much nicer NR
- Much easier ability to keep detail where you want it and soften where you don't
- Better removal of blemishes

Resolution is more useful than just addressing any worry about print sizes. Higher resolutions allow a plethora of digital darkroom magic that you cannot pull off with a lower resolution sensor. Higher resolutions allow for cropping ability as well while also providing some of these same post processing needs while retaining a high quality 20x300 x 30x300 resolution in the end.

I do plan on doing some very large acrylic and metal prints, I did some smallish ones in the past and was amazed at the look of those, and plan on doing more.

Actually I found that higher res cameras (denser photo sites) produces more noise... that can be gotten rid of in the down sampling process to make them smaller... just volumetrically my mac and PC just bog down on 41 plus mpx images. Ive been wanting to get into some astro photography...but then again, if I need a large image I just do multiple images and stitch them.

Metal prints are pretty cool. Did some with a buddy when we went up Maine... and "his" prints look amazing. Metal is cool.

For a different perspective, my family went to one of the local portrait mill studios just a few years back and came away with perfectly serviceable family portraits and such; they were still using 40Ds for shooting. They just had their lighting and everything all dialed in so that framing could be focused on and then hitting the button.