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Jean-Luc Godard famously said, “When you photograph a face, you photograph the soul behind it.” The Aborigines believe that photographing someone can steal their soul. No doubt, portraits are among photography’s most powerful pictures. Fortunately, one doesn’t have to break the bank for a high-quality lens that allows them to blow out their background and bring their subjects features, expression, and personality to life in a still image.
Depending on your needs and uses, one can spend from just over a hundred dollars to thousands of dollars on a portrait lens. Fortunately, achieving very high quality is available even in the most affordable lenses. While it’s true that you do get what you pay for, there are diminishing returns as one spends more and more money. Be sure to check out the “Editor’s Choice” on our list, where this writer believes that price and value converge perfectly. That said, there are no bad choices on this list. Each and every lens is highly capable and far above the capabilities of any kit lens for taking beautiful portraits. If you are new to photography, it is recommended you start out on the affordable side; perhaps you’ll want a more versatile lens in the future, rather than the (mostly) prime lenses on this list.
One thing to notice: for some of the lenses, at the end of the specs, you’ll notice a DXOMark Overall Benchmark score. DXOMark is a popular and valuable “objective” source for measuring lenses on these qualities: Sharpness, transmission, distortion, vignetting, and aberration. While DXOMark uses consistent testing, in the end, these are just numbers. We include this figure for thoroughness, but the best judge of a lens’ quality is by using your eyes and checking out image samples. Beauty, style, and character can’t be reduced to numbers. It’s all about what you like.
One other final consideration: with all of the lenses on this list, their focal length is described on a full frame camera (which Nikon has deemed “FX”). If you have a “DX” Nikon with a smaller sensor size, the lenses will have an effectively higher focal length. For instance, on the first lens on our list, it’s a 35mm lens intended for DX cameras; thus it is must like a 50mm lens on a full frame camera. Beyond the focal length, however, other attributes of lenses stay the same such as color, contrast, and sharpness.
With all of that in mind, here’s the top 10 best portrait lenses for Nikon cameras from lowest to highest price.