I’d like to share with you some photos that I took today. The idea was to test my EF 40mm f2.8 pancake lens as a portrait lens on both full-frame and APS-C cameras. I own both an EOS 5D Mark II and a 40D, and having cameras with different sensor sizes increases the versatility of my prime lenses, thanks to the different effective field-of-view.
The 40mm pancake lens intrigues me because it is a moderate wide-angle on a full-frame camera, and a short telephoto lens on an APS-C camera (with a field-of-view equivalent to around 64mm).
Here are the results. First, the photos that I took on the EOS 5D Mark II. They are JPEGs straight out of the camera – I used the Romantic Picture Style (click here to learn more about Picture Styles and find out where to download the Romantic Picture Style). I shot Raw+JPEG to give me both ready to use JPEGs and Raw files that I can process any way I want.
These are the photos that I took on the EOS 40D. I used the Portrait Picture Style for these images (with saturation set to -2). They are also straight out of the camera, I just lightened them a little in Lightroom first.
My conclusion? I preferred the results from the EOS 5D Mark II. There is something very nice about this focal length for taking portraits, as long as I don’t get too close to the model. I enjoyed using the Romantic Picture Style too. It’s the first time I’ve ever got JPEGs that I feel comfortable using without any post-processing.
A big thanks to my model, Miss Wimmy, for posing on a windy Wellington Saturday afternoon.
If you’d like to learn more about Canon lenses, then take a look at my new eBook Understanding Lenses: Part I. It’s on special until the end of the month.