Tips From A Expert

• Focus on the eyes

While eye contact is not always desirable in a portrait, sharp eyes certainly are. Manually select an AF point that's positioned over one of your model's eyes, or use the central focus point to lock focus on their eye.

Then, with the shutter release half-pressed to keep the setting locked, recompose your picture before taking the shot.

•  Using a standard or telephoto lens

Wide-angle lenses are a great choice for photographing environmental portraits, where you want to show a person within a specific context. However, wide-angle lenses used close-up will distort facial features and creative unflattering pictures.

A better choice for portraits is either a standard lens or a short telephoto lens. The classic portrait focal lengths for a full-frame camera are 50mm, 85mm prime lenses and a 70-200mm zoom.

These will help to compress features and provide a more natural-looking result.

• Use Aperture Priority mode

Aperture Priority gives you direct control over the aperture, and as a result the depth of field (DOF).

Fast prime lenses, such as 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.2 enable you to choose very large apertures for a shallow depth of field. This can help you create those creamy-smooth, out of focus backgrounds that give portraits a professional quality.

Working with such a narrow band of sharpness means that you need to be accurate with focusing - the entire portrait will look soft if you don't focus accurately on the eyes.