Looking for a Cheap Portrait Lens for Canon 600D?
I've  been testing out various cheap Canon lenses as well as my normal Canon L  series that I normally use for shoots. If you are looking for a cheap  lens to shoot portraits with then you can't get much better value than  the Canon 35-80 lens that was sold with many cameras such as the Canon  500N during the 1990s.
I picked up an example of the  lens on Ebay recently for £22 and tested it yesterday on a shoot using  my Canon 600D camera. During the same shoot I also used my Canon 5D with  the new Canon 100mm L f2.8 IS macro lens as a comparison. How will a  £900 lens compare to a £22 one?
The answer is very  well. The results in a controlled studio environment were very good  although clearly the advantages of the Canon 100 macro are far more than  the improved optical quality. You also get the f2.8 aperture as well as  the image stabilisation.
