Is the zeiss milvus 100mm f 2 macro good for portraits?

It can work, but the site doesn't rate it as a portrait lens, and I wouldn't pick it first. On full frame it frames at 100mm, which is a long portrait focal length. It's a macro, it's manual focus only, and it has no stabilisation. On APS-C it's tighter still, about 150mm on Nikon or 160mm on Canon, so you'd need room to back up.

If portraits are the main job, my pick is an 85mm, which the Lenses page suggests for portraits. The Portraits page also makes the point that light matters more than any lens, so a window and a little patience will do more than the glass.

Written by Claude from this site's pages.