What is a good lens for shooting model photography or people.

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28-300mm lens was good enough for Model Photography.

A 50mm is the usual choice. 85mm is an alternative. It also depends on the crop factor of your camera. Prime lenses are recommended because they are sharper.

From Canon, the 85 F1.2L, 70-200 F2.8L and F2.0 135L are all very nice lenses for this sort of thing.

What you need is a 2 part answer. First of all - as far as brands, I'd suggest a company called Tamron (www.tamron.com). I use them for all my lenses (portraiture and action) and have yet to have a problem. I've dropped my lenses in water and even set one on fire and they still work. Next thing - what distance to photograph at? A general 28-300mm lense is nice. It's good for all around portraiture and action photos. And it's pretty decently priced. (less than $200). Now, it's said that if you close your one eye and look at someone from a portrait distance (7 - 8 feet) you are seeing them at roughly 75mm which produces the closest 1:1 ratio (no distortions when viewed). Now, if you photograph that person at 85mm or 50mm you won't see any distortions (elongated face, etc.) but you won't get a true life size print (not that you'll be going this big). The lenses I'd suggest are: 1st Choice: http://www.tamron.com/lenses/prod/2875mm.asp 2nd Choice: http://www.tamron.com/lenses/prod/28300_di.asp

In the arena of the 35mm camera, the 85mm f/1.8 and 105mm f/2.5 were the standard lenses used for portraiture. They were very sharp and allowed the most creativity when using selective depth of field. I still use the same focal lengths to shoot my models, but I use a DSLR, so with the cropping factor, the actual lens focal length is 57mm for the 85mm length and 70mm for the 105mm length. Of course I cheat once in a while just to jazz up the shoot and use a 12mm to make the model look longer and a 500mm to squash the background into a single plane

50-80mm

This depends on what camera you are using as there are many manufacturers of lenses set with different mounts. For Canon DSLR's, I would recommend the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM. I recommend this lens because of it's speed, f/2.8 is a large aperture producing a shallow depth of field which is perfect for portraiture, and this speed extends through the zoom range which is an added plus. Also the large aperture and image stabilization make for a great shooting combination for soft lighting conditions when shooting by hand. Some people like to shoot with a fixed focal length telephoto, like the EF 135mm f/2.8, also for a Canon. This lens has a feature known as softfocus which does not give a fully sharpened image but contrasts the subject and still separates it from the background nicely. This lens also has normal AF focus and does produce crisp images. If you do not use Canon, Nikon has lenses that are equivalent and there are also aftermarket manufactureres like Tamron and Quantaray/Sigma that produce similar lenses. Just remember, for portraiture you want a fast lens, or lowest f/number posible throughout the zoom range. I just wanted to acquaint you with the lens types and focal lengths, perhaps you can find an equivalent. There are links to the canon website giving specs of the lenses.