Length Portrait: However, although a long focal length portrait lens is mandatory, it need not be expensive. The utmost of critical sharpness in a portrait lens is not necessary, or even desired, since considerable diffusion can be tolerated in portrait negatives. Your lens needn't be in a shutter for strictly studio portraits, either. A lens in barrel is perfectly satisfactory, since you can provide yourself with a simple Packard shutter to use behind the lens. Many portrait men actually prefer the Packard to the more costly between-the-lens shutters.
Daguerre himself despaired of ever securing portraits by his invention, because of the length portrait of exposure required, which led the satirical journal Le Charivari to propose, in its August 30, 1839, edition:
You want to make a portrait of your wife. You fix her head in a temporary iron collar to get the indispensable immobility . . . You point the lens of the Camera at her face, and when you take the portrait it doesn't represent your wife; it is her parrot, or watering pot, or worse.
View cameras are more satisfactory than the press type cameras for portraits and are much less expensive.
The most specialized bit of equipment of all for portrait photography is the long focal length portrait lens. It is imperative that you use a lens which will give a large image of the subject's face on the film without having the Camera closer to the subject than five or six feet. This means a focal length portrait of around ten inches for 4x5 film.
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Photography
