best aperture for group portraits?

Question

What is the best aperture for group portraits? I am using a canon Digital Rebel XT with , and sometimes seem to have problems with Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. When I go wide open, I sometimes have problems with focus. I think this may be due to narrow depth of field when triying to get many faces, even if they are close to the same plane. Is something more like 2.8 reccomended?

I am shooting with no flash and light is OK but not great so that at f 1.8 / ISO 800 the shutter times are in the range of 1/125 sec. So the question is what is the widest aperture I can use to get a depth of field of at least 1 foot. I do not want to make the aperture too narrow to have possible motion blurr or need ISO1600. This is for prints 14x11 or smaller.

Answer 1

For a group portrait, use f/2.8 to f/8.
To get away with a large aperture, focus on somebody 1/3rd into the group. This way the circle of confusion (acceptably in focus) will extend from the people in the front to the people in the back. If you used the same f-stop and focussed on the people in front, the people in the back would be out of focus.
If you're posing people, you can also have the people in the back lean towards you a bit and let the people in front lean back. Casually, of course. Don't want it to look like a game of Twister ;-) This trick will reduce the area you need to get in focus so you can open up the lens another stop.
And if you're lining people up in rows, don't form straight lines - use a circular arc around the lens. Same reason.

Answer 2

Best Aperture For Portraits

Answer 3

I am sorry, but I disagree. The kit lens on the rebel is not horrible at all. If you know how to use your camera, the kit lens can be quite acceptable. If people can take acceptable group shots with a point and shoot, then you should certainly be able to do much better with a Rebel and the kit lens. With an 85mm lens you'll have to stand really far away to get everyone in. A 35mm would have been better, giving you 56mm effectively on your Rebel (which has a 1.6x conversion factor) I think you need to learn more about photography before you go round blaming your equipment. After all, you did choose an 85mm prime for a group shot, which proves you don't know much about lenses. There's an old saying that comes to mind - "a bad workman blames his tools"

Answer 4

2.8 is the biggest aperture, which will give you the shortest depth of field possible, which is the opposite of what you want. I would recommend an aperture of 11 or so. Since it's a group photo, I assume people are generally standing still, so motion blur shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure you have enough light.

Answer 5

for a close-up portrait, photographers usually used longer focal lengths (70-100mm) and wide open, to give a bit of softness to the skin detail
However- for a group portrait you're usually further away and faces are smaller. this calls for more detail and depth of field. With that lens, really anything f/4 to f/8 should give similar clarity- with the smaller giving you more depth of field if you need it for the positioning of the faces. When you get into the really small f/stops on these new digital cameras, you begin to lose detail again due to diffraction effects. i.e. the spot size that the lens can focus down to is larger than a pixel.

Answer 6

I'd definitely go towards a smaller aperture (larger number) if you are having problems getting everyone in focus. If the background is not an issue, go for f/8 or f/11 to get in the "sweet zone" of your lens.

Answer 7

Best F Stop For Portraits