Portrait lenses

I have been thinking of converting a spare room in the house into a studio for portrait work and was thinking of purchasing 3 lenses

50mm 1.4
85mm 1.8
135L 2

i already have the 24-70L 2.8 and the 70-200L 2.8 IS and was wondering will getting the primes give me better results then the lenses i already have.

IMO...for studio type work, your 24-70 should meet pretty much all of your needs. Keep in mind your space constraints....the 85 and 135 will require some working distance that you may not have. With the zoom, you'll be able to obtain different effects simply by zooming to your desired FL. The main reason for the primes IMO is there superior low light performance which isn't usually a factor in a studio environment.

thanks for the reply jra, so i would be better off putting the extra money toward better quality lights and some nice backdrops then.

JohnAng wrote in post #4074117
so i would be better off putting the extra money toward better quality lights and some nice backdrops then.

Correct

agreed, you've got some nice glass there. No need to buy more...unless you can afford L primes (85L)

thanks all.
time to start converting the room then

JohnAng wrote in post #4074117
so i would be better off putting the extra money toward better quality lights and some nice backdrops then.

Correct. Tough i would still get the 50mm f/1.4. It still beats the 24-70 in terms of IQ and it will offer you a much shallower DoF for creative purposes such as full body shot's/nudes where you want part of the body fading away.

JohnAng wrote in post #4073911
I have been thinking of converting a spare room in the house into a studio for portrait work and was thinking of purchasing 3 lenses

50mm 1.4
85mm 1.8
135L 2

i already have the 24-70L 2.8 and the 70-200L 2.8 IS and was wondering will getting the primes give me better results then the lenses i already have.

When doing portraits in the studio, you will want to have the subject at least six feet or so in front of the background. You will also want the camera at least six feet or so in front of the subject. You will find that (using and APS-C camera) the 50mm focal length would normally work pretty well for "conventional" portraits with these distances. If you stretched to the 85mm focal length you would be limited to a head-n-shoulders framing at these distances. If you had a much bigger studio than the average "spare room", you might be able to use the longer focal lengths.

Keeping the distances between subject/background and camera/subject are very important. The subject/background distance will allow you to blur the background a bit so it's not so "busy" in the image. The camera/subject distance is even more important to get good perspective (relationship of foreground/background subject element sizes - consider noses vs. ears, etc.) in your images that will please the subjects.

I would suggest that you mock up the studio space before going full bore and see what focal length(s) work for you. There are many things that can be done to make a smaller space work for you as a studio. If you run into space problems, bring that up here and you will get a lot of ideas to work with.

well i have 3 options

spare bedroom which is 4 mtrs x 3.4 mtrs or turn the garage into a studio which is 7mts x 6.5mtrs, or the library which is 5mtrs x 4mtrs

Not sure which room i would use yet. the spare bedroom seems to be the logical choice here though as i'm not sure the wife will be pleased with me taking over the library. The garage wil cost abit as i would then want to carpet it and add heating and cooling to it