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When I bought my 480mm Apo-Ronar, I made an exposure stopped down to f/256, just because I'd never had a lens that shut down that far. The negative contact printed very nicely, with more resolution than I could see with a loupe. And it's worth noting that Edward Weston made some of his most famous still-lifes through a pinhole aperture inserted into a lens.
If you enlarge considerably from a fine grain film, you might have issues. Since I only contact print, I never worry about closing down "too far".
Of course, now that I work more with soft lenses, I tend to stay close to wide open...
Last edited by Mark Sawyer; 02-12-2010 at 02:45 PM.
The real problem with digital photography is that now I'm the only one who stinks of fixer...
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Mark's right, I come from the other side  I ONLY enlarge, but these small apertures haven't caused a drop in resolution yet 
I try to stay one stop off the minimum aperture and that seems to work well.
Ian
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While it is true that most lenses that are not optimized to be shot wide open (ie: fast telephoto lenses), don't let this get in the way of your photographic vision. One of the reasons shooting wide open (or close to wide open) in large format is a very narrow depth of field. Since a large portion of your image is going to be soft/out of focus, the lens shortcomings won't be as noticeable. On the other end of the coin, if you shoot with the lens stopped all the way down, while there may be some diffraction present, the fact that most people probably don't enlarge their 4x5 shots much passed 16x20 which is only a 4x enlargement factor. Keeping in mind that most technical issues of a photo are more visible the larger the magnification factor. Therefore, shooting at f45 on 4x5 is not as much of an issue as shooting 35mm at f22.
Cheers,
Jay
www.jasondimichele.com
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Gains from stopping down a lens are "mostly" off center and are greatest at the farthest corners and using movements increases the need to stop down. There are a few exceptions. For instance the Kodak 203mm Ektar dialyte is usually sharpest wide open at f/7.7 but doesn't degrade much, if any, stopped down to f/16 or so. Portraits can often benefit from wide-open distortions if the center of interest is... centered
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 Originally Posted by Mark Sawyer  And it's worth noting that Edward Weston made some of his most famous still-lifes through a pinhole aperture inserted into a lens.
... I'd never heard that one before. Where did it come from?
A motorcyclist is the only one who understands why a dog rides with it's head out the window.
"I had an idea once, it died of loneliness"--George
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Light fall off is an issue with some lenses and stopping down helps. When using a graduated neutral density filter (a center filter) to control fall off, stopping down is necessary to obtain the full benefit of the filter. As to corner sharpness, stopping down can improve the resolution and can help with any off-center imaging (using movements).
A partially vignetted, swirly image may be just the thing for you, but, if it is not, stopping down will eliminate a lot, if not all, of it. Generally, unless there is some desired effect that requires opening the aperture, stopping down to at least the middle of the range available will be worthwhile. And, as has been said, the benefits of stopping down even further usually outweigh any concerns about diffraction.
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I'll post my reply another way...
Will the loss of detail (usually off-center) plus limited DOF help or hinder "your view" of the final print? It's a decision based on lens performance and artistic expression... subject, lens, photographer's vision, final print, etc. As AA would put it, "the it's the neg's score vs. the print's performance". Write the score (neg) to achieve the final performance (print) you envision for the subject. No one here can help you with that because only "you" can. We do not have "your vision" of "your subject".
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