What Enlarging lens for 4X5?

Thanks again for the information. More than I can ever use lol

Ansel Adams books recommend using a larger lens then is required. So for 4x5 that would be 150mm. Why compromise on the enlarging lens when we put so much emphasis and money in the quality of the taking lenses? An enlarging lens is just as important!

I personally use a 180 componon for my 4x5 negatives and can print up to 16x20 easily. Though I have to hoist my enlarger pretty high, which is wall mounted anyway, high enough to give me what I want.

There is no fall off what so ever and I get sharp prints edge to edge, corner to corner since I am projecting through the best part of the lens.

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (RAP @ May 17 2003, 08:42 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>There is no fall off what so ever and I get sharp prints edge to edge, corner to corner since I am projecting through the best part of the lens.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
I have often heard that opinion. I agree that this may be a solution to fall-off problems. It may even help getting better sharpness in the corners, if you experience some alignment problems with your enlarger. But it is not generally better and wise to use a longer lens.

First, all decent el-lenses do not fall-off significantly in the corners, if stopped down 2-3 f-stops. Second, if you look at the specs of (el- or LF) lenses, you will find that MTF (and thus resolution and sharpness) decreases as the focal length increases. However, MTF "multiplied with coverage" (i.e. the amount of information projected thru the lens) increases (the reason why LF actually has more resolution and sharpness). But if your lens has more coverage than you actually use, then you will waste some performance. What is left is the lower MTF for the coverage you use.

This usually does not have much impact to LF in practice. Nor does fall-off of a 150mm or 135mm lens have. However, everyone who prints 35mm can easily verify how performance drops with longer focal el-lenses.

RAP said:

I personally use a 180 componon for my 4x5 negatives and can print up to 16x20 easily.

Click to expand...

That said, what is the minimun size print you can make with the 180 mm lens? At this minimum size, what then is the lens-to-film distance?

This question is asked because I am wondering what the longest F.L. of enlarging lens is possible with the Beseler 45?

Thanks

Alan Davenport

Since you quoted me I will throw in my 2 cents. It really depends on the length of your griders on your enlarger, or , how high you can raise your enlarger head? I personally work with an old jalopy of an elarger, an Omega D2. WHAT A BOMB! It reminds me of an old Chevy Nova I once drove. The bellows is even home made, a bag type bellows from some black vinyl I sewed up, but it is light tight, rock steady, cold light head and a good lens.

I once recieved an order for some 16x20 prints but at a time, with my 180mm, I could only get 11x14 prints. So I had to either, lower the enlarging table, or raise the height of the enlarger. I chose to raise the enlarger. It is bolted to a 1" thick piece of shelving which is bracketed into the studs, and double turn buckled into the wall. Solid, and level!

With my 180mm lens, I can get prints from a 4x5 negative ranging from 5x7 to 16x20.

In reading this, I'm reminded of one "sneaky trick" that I have used in the past for portraiture - but I can't remember exactly how successful it was in other applications. Many moons ago, I was rooting around (uh ... if you are from OZ, read "rummaging" - although there isn't a great deal of difference in any of the meanings ..) in the "Used - We're Trying to Dump This Stuff" - bins, and came up with two 40.5 mm "soft" filters. I bought them because that was the size that fit my Rodenstock enlarging lenses. Wonderful for softening and minimizing blemishes in portraiture.
This got me to thinking ... the function of a "close-up" or "portrait" auxilliary lens is to shorten focal length ... allowing close focusing. The same optical principle works on an enlarging lens as well as a camera lens ... so to gain a greater magnification at a shorter column height .... I obtained a 40.5 - 67 mm filter adapter, and with my existing 67 to 60 Bayonet adapter - I mounted a Hasselblad "Proxar" - one of them ... possibly the "1.0", on the Rodenstock 80mm in the enlarger .... and ... It WORKED!! ... at least well enough to produce "good" portraiture.

I can't remember - possibly I did not "wring" it out thoroughly in a "picky" application as a landscape - or - I have a photograph of a Bandstand in Lichtentaler Alee', Baden-Baden, Germany, with delicate, complex wooden "filigree" woodwork - I'll try it on that one... and try to determine *IF* the image quality suffers, and how severely it is affected.