Buying an 85mm lens is one of the most common moves in portrait photography, and it's also one of the most misunderstood. The lens has a reputation for good reason, but the way most people use it wastes most of what makes it worth owning.
Coming to you from Brenda of The Bergreens, this practical video has Bergreen walking through exactly how to get more out of an 85mm lens beyond the obvious "shoot wide open and blur the background" approach. She starts with what the 85mm actually does well, and it's not just bokeh. When you shoot at this focal length, you're naturally standing farther from your subject. That distance creates a flattering perspective and compresses the background, which is what actually separates your subject from the scene behind them. Bergreen makes the point that this works just as well when your background is cluttered or unflattering, because the compression does a lot of the cleanup for you. Her starter recipe is straightforward: get physically close to your subject, keep the background far behind them, shoot somewhere between f/1.8 and f/2.8, and use eye autofocus if your camera has it, because at wide apertures this focal length is unforgiving with missed focus.
Where the video gets more useful is in the composition section. Most people lock into headshots and stop there, but Bergreen argues that variety comes from moving your feet, not switching lenses. Tight portraits, mid-length shots, and environmental portraits are all possible with the same 85mm if you're willing to reposition. She also connects posing directly to composition, treating body language and energy as storytelling tools rather than just aesthetic choices. Light gets its own section, and her point about catchlights is worth remembering: if there's no light in the eyes, the photo reads as flat no matter how sharp or well-composed it is.
The bokeh conversation is where Bergreen pushes back against common habits. Shooting everything at your widest aperture makes your work look repetitive, and she argues that stopping down sometimes gives you better context, stronger storytelling, and sharper results. There's also a frank section on when the 85mm is the wrong tool entirely. Tight spaces, fast-moving subjects, and situations that demand quick flexibility are all places where a 35mm, 50mm, 24-70mm, or 70-200mm zoom will serve you better. She also mentions the 135mm as a lens she's been gravitating toward lately for a different look than the 85mm delivers. The video covers more on distance relationships between subject, background, and camera, as well as a deeper breakdown of how aperture and focal length interact, so there's more to watch than what's covered here. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Bergreen.
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