Canon 35mm f/2 vs Rokinon 35mm f/1.4 vs Canon f/2.8

[pdirestajr]

I have another question: I intend to sell my Canon 55-250mm f/4-5.6 to buy Canon 35mm f/2 for portrait shoots (separation of subject from background is important to me). However, I don't know if f/2 of the 35mm can create shallow DoF like (or better than) the 55-250mm with long focal length or not?

I use crop sensor and don't want to move to far from subject so the 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 or longer focal length are not suitable for me.

Any advice for me on that? Thank you very much!

Are you talking about shallow DOF, or the bokeh quality and compression of the blurred background?

The telephoto Zoom at it's longest @ f/5.6 will be more blurred that the 35mm @ f/2.

But there are a lot of factors involved:
- camera Distance from subject
- aperture used
- focal length
- background distance to subject

Here are 2 shots since I had the 55-250 a long time ago, and still use & love my 35mm f/2.0.

This shot is the EF-S 55-250mm @ 232mm f/5.6:

green army man by Philip DiResta, on Flickr

And this shot is the 35mm f/2 wide open:

Lex 39 weeks by Philip DiResta, on Flickr

In the bottom photo, the background is across the street (pretty far), but still a TON of detail. Since I wanted this shot to still show the city, it worked for me.

The top photo was just a walk around street shot.

[Ellen Schmidtee]

I have both the Canon 35mm f/2 and Rokinon 35mm f/1.4

The Rokinon is fully manual, meaning you'll have to set both the aperture & focus by hand. If bokeh is important to you, the Canon 35mm f/2 has a nervous bokeh when linear objects are out of focus, as can be seen in the Photozone review of the lens.

[dshipley]

I just don't think 35mm will be a good portrait lens.  If you have the f stop down pretty low, say 1.4-2, it will be impossible to get a whole group of people all in focus.  Secondly, if you buy a 50mm prime, that's 80mm on a 1.6x, and that is actually not far away.  So actually a 50 would work really well.  If you still have your 55-250mm zoom lens, set it to 50mm and test it out to see what I mean.  35mm on a crop 1.6 is 56mm, so yes, that lens works but I have had a hard time getting everything in focus when the aperture is really wide.

Thank you for the reply, but I don't really get you point: you suggested me to get 50mm, either 1.8 or 1.4 will have wider aperture and longer focal length compare to 35mm f/2, so the effect must be shallower DoF, and harder to get focus with wide aperture.

In previous post I just wonder will 35mm f/2 with its wide open aperture could produce shallow DoF like the 55-250mm or not. In other words, DoF is more depend on aperture or more depend on focal length?

You are right on the 50mm that it is not too far away. I will check it out for considering

Here's an example for you to look at and decide for yourself. Lens is the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4 @ f/1.4. Since the body is a 5D2 I've gone ahead and have darkened out the image area that wouldn't be covered by your 1.6x crop sensor. The trunk of the tree is about 8" wide.

[AndyVN2]

Thank you all for the valuable information! Now I realized that perspective is one reason that the 35mm can't be used for portrait. I will take 50mm f/1.4 for both portrait and low-light shoots.

I'm pretty new to photography so it's great to have your knowledge and experience shared!
Wish all a nice weekend! 

[vbi]

Just to confuse the situation further...the 24-105L is a really sweet combination with a crop sensor and will give you relatively wide angle with a nice range for portraits. Might be worth considering instead of a couple of fixed length optics.

[bdunbar79]

I know you don't have a FF camera, but if you want to get one, I wouldn't recommend using the 35 f/2 on a FF camera.  However, if you can use a crop sensor, better.