Is a 50mm Prime Really All You Need for Portraits?

Choosing between a 35mm and 85mm prime for portraits is one of the most common debates in portrait shooting, and most people assume you need both. This video makes a strong case that a single 50mm prime not only covers the middle ground but can actually outperform the two-lens setup in more situations than you'd expect.

Coming to you from James Reader, this detailed comparison video puts the 50mm prime through its paces against both a 35mm and an 85mm across full-body portraits, mid-length shots, and headshots. One of the clearest takeaways comes early, when Reader steps back with each focal length to maintain the same framing and lets the compression tell the story. At 85mm, background elements compress hard, leading lines lose impact, and the scene tightens in ways that can hurt the image as much as help it. At 35mm, the background pushes away and the sense of scale opens up dramatically, which is genuinely great for environmental portraits, but you can lose important background elements entirely. The 50mm, Reader argues, consistently threads the needle between those two extremes, keeping depth and dimension while pulling the background close enough to feel intentional.

The environmental portrait section is where Reader's argument gets most compelling. Shooting against a cathedral skyline, the 35mm pushes the cathedral so far back that it almost disappears. The 85mm drags it right up behind the subject, which looks striking but starts to flatten the sense of depth. The 50mm keeps it present and meaningful without overwhelming the frame. Reader also makes an honest concession here: there are situations where 35mm is simply the better tool. When you want to make a subject feel small against a grand staircase or exaggerate the scale of a location, 35mm does something 50mm just can't fully replicate. He doesn't oversell the 50mm; he's clear about where it falls short.

One of the more surprising moments in the video is the headshot test. Reader sent three headshots, each taken on a different focal length, to his subject with no context, and asked her to pick a favorite. Her response says something worth sitting with: she could barely tell them apart. She noticed slight differences in color tone and texture, but the focal length itself, which most people treat as a critical variable in headshots, barely registered. When she did pick a favorite, it was the 50mm shot. That's not a sample size you can draw hard conclusions from, but it does raise a fair question about how much of the focal length debate lives in photographers' heads rather than in the actual results clients see.

Reader also spends time on the practical freedom of shooting with a single prime, the gear-swapping momentum problem with a two-body setup, and a real-world situation in Malta where the 50mm simply couldn't get the shot. Check out the video above for the full breakdown from Reader, including his take on when the 85mm goes too far and what happens when you stop worrying about having the "right" lens.