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Useful Photography Tip

The Best Thing to Do When Photographing Someone With an f1.2 Lens

Chris Gampat
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09/03/2022
3 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Sony 50mm f1.2 G Master portrait Edited 1.21-2000s100

Everyone loves their fast prime lenses! They can create gorgeous photos to be proud of and that everyone on social media stare at. But those photos are difficult to pull off at times. And if you refuse to stop your aperture down, then don’t worry because there’s a way to get beautiful photos at f1.2. We’re going to share a few tips on what to do based on the work we’ve done with Canon, Sony, and Nikon cameras. That means if you’re using a Leica lens on a full-frame camera with manual focus, you’re out of luck for this tutorial. But if you’re using an autofocusing f1.2 lens on a smaller-frame autofocus camera, then you’re probably in luck.

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We’re surprised how many photographers refuse to use scene recognition. But the first thing to do is make sure face detection and eye detection are enabled. This will help the camera and lens recognize when it’s pointed at someone’s face. For the rest of this to work, we recommend enabling the wide-area AF mode. You don’t need to tell the camera to recognize a face if your firmware is up to date and doing its job.

Second (and here’s the big tip), set the camera to the continuous autofocus mode. For Nikon and Sony, this is AF-C. For Canon, this is Servo AF. When combined with face and eye detection, the camera and lens will track a model if and when they move. For the best results, tell it to lock onto that subject and not switch to another.

Why photograph your subject in continuous autofocus mode? You and your model are bound to move at times. And if you do, the camera can continuously work to track your model’s eyes at f1.2. Admittedly, this won’t work as well with some of the Nikon cameras we’ve used. But it’s pretty flawless with nearly every modern Canon or Sony camera we’ve tested it with. 

f.2

For even better results, turn off the exposure preview. This is a controversial statement even amongst our staff. Reviews Editor Hillary Grigonis swears by exposure preview, but it slows down the autofocus performance of every camera on the market. Using an f1.2 lens with exposure preview turned off will let the camera get the most accurately focused photos. With that in mind, you don’t have to work as hard, and you can instead focus on giving your subject more direction. Lastly, make sure your shutter speed is high enough to prevent camera shake. Image stabilization will help if you’re not using effective hand-hold methods. But overall, you should always try to get the camera and lens to be as steady as possible. 

Some photographers will photograph their subjects at 20fps. That’s a waste. There’s no need to take so many photos to then cull through later in post-production. That’s lazy photography. Instead, work more with your subject to get a few awesome images you’ll thoroughly love.

We really like the Canon RF 50mm f1.2, Nikon Z 50mm f1.2, and Sony 50mm f1.2 G Master lenses. And we’re sure you will as well.

autofocus canon continuous autofocus eye f1.2 lens face detection nikon sony tracking
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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