Question on Enlarging lenses

[ic-racer]

Everyone know how to read them? If not I can point out what is going on in those charts.

[clayne]

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I use either a 5.6 90 mm VHE Vivitar (Schneider-made) or a 5.6 105 Rodenstock Rodagon. My old darkroom-rat mentors insisted an oversized lens gave more even coverage and better sharpness across the image. They may have been right.

While I generally agree with this, I've used both 50 and 80mm Rodagons for 135, and have never seen a noticeable difference in sharpness, personally. Doesn't mean it isn't there, but it seems negligible at best.

[Martin Aislabie]

I print 8x10 roughly 80% of the time, the rest 11x14. I don't have any 16x20 trays let alone an easel to hold the paper so I need a lens that can print both sizes with consistant high quality.

I am stuck on M-39 thread mount because honestly lens boards for Devere 504s are the same price of a dinner for two new. I am happy with the 80 5.5 Nikkor I am using, are there any other M-39 80mm lenses out there I should look for. I know the quality between all of them are pretty much the same.

Bill, pretty much all enlarging lenses up to and including 135mm use a 39mm thread - so you should have plenty of options.

I actually like using a slightly longer than "standard" lens of enlarging - as it gives me more room to wiggle my hands as I dodge and burn.

With an enlarger the size of the 504 column height isn't going to be a problem with any length of lens unless you are into very selective enlargements of parts of a negative

I suspect almost none of us could detect the performance variations between any decent enlarging lens on even the most fabulous 11x14 print, as the performance level seems to start at outstanding and only goes up from there

As well as the Nikkor, the Rodenstock Rodagon and Schneider Componon-S are both excellent. The 80mm f/4 versions of all these lenses are 6 element in 4 groups and are considered better than the 4 element f/5,6 counterparts - but again as 11x14 could you really tell?

Happy hunting

Martin