What's the optimum lens for portraiture photography?

I have heard that its good to use a lens with more than 100mm for portraiture. But won't that need a large studio?
How about Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm f/1.8? I'm currently having a Nikon D3000.

Added (1). I don't have space to do buy longer mm lens, but if I have to avoid distortion using 35mm, will it be effective if i shoot from far, but crop the photo later?

35mm is a fairly wide angle lens for portrait photography. You'll have to do some serious cropping to get it to not look like a snapshot.

100 and even 200 looks good, but you'll need lots of distance to get the subject in frame and a lot of light too! If you don't have a large room and lots of light, try shooting outdoors with reflectors!

Well anything with an and aperture that goes down low to around 1.4 or even 1.8 is good… I actually have that lens and it is awesome

my flickr

www.flickr.com/photos/sketchsk

Yes, 85-105 is the "classic" range for a portrait lens on a 35mm camera. You are using a D3000, which has a "cropped sensor," though, so you have to consider that. With the 1.5X "crop factor," you should look for a lens between about 50mm and 70mm. Two come to mind. Well, three.

The 50mm lens is really great for portraits on a D3000. If you don't mind NOT having auto-focus, you can use the 50mm f/1.4D lens. It costs about $330. If you want auto-focus with your camera, you need the 50mm f/1.4G AF-S lens, which costs about $100 more. You could consider other makers, but I'm not familiar enough to say which ones are good or bad.

Another way to go is to get the 60mm f/2.8G AF-S macro (Micro-Nikkor) lens. Just because it allows macro photography doesn't mean you can't use it as any other 60mm lens. It's not cheap, though, at over $500.

The 35mm is a good "normal" lens, but it might make you work too close to your subjects for their comfort and for a good point of view. If you are too close, their features look a bit distorted.

The best choice for you is probably the 50mm f/1.4G AF-S lens.

Someone will undoubtedly recommend the 85mm lens, but with your 1.5X factor (which they have ignored), it is rather long for portrait work unless you have a large studio to work in so you can back up quite a bit from your subject. Okay, you should only have to be about 10-12 feet from your subject for a head shot (15 feet for a torso), but add 5 feet behind them for the background and 5 or more feet behind you so you can have room to work and you are looking at a room 20-25 feet long.

Sure, go ahead with the 35mm. It will obviously cause unwanted optical distortion, but there's a way around that.simply take the pictures in RAW format. Then using lightroom, use the lens profile option to correct distortion. There are also other software in the internet that corrects optical distortion.

It depends on how far you shoot. If you're doing head to shoulder portraits, you'll want a lens with an equivalent of 100mm or more. If you're shooting full-length portraits, than the 35mm f/1.8 lens will work just fine.

I'm not sure what 35mm equivalents you are working with but in 35mm film land 135 is considered too much zoom. It flattens the face too much. Somewhere in the 80 to 100mm or so in 35mm land is about right. It's flatteringly flattens facial features. And always remember to make the eyes sharp!

The idea is to get just enough zoom to flatteringly flatten the face.