I'm looking at older lenses for an 8x10 camera. How do I know which lens will cover 8x10? Will everything over a 14" cover is tere anything wider? Also what do I multiply 14" by to determine mm.

-- Kirk Eck (eck@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu), March 24, 1999

Answers

Inch to mm conversion

1" = 25.4mm

-- Ze'ev Kantor (zeevk@netvision.net.il), March 24, 1999.

A 14 inch lens should cover fine. Get under the focussing cloth and move the swings and tilts until you see the fuzzy round edge of the image. Look at where the lens board is positioned and that will give an idea of the coverage of the lens. Do this at full aperture.

-- Tony (ajbrent@mich.com), March 25, 1999.

In general, Dagors have large image circles, anything 12" and up will cover 8 X 10. Some of the shorter ones, like a "6 inch Wide Field Dagor" or similarly marked lenses will cover as well. They can be a very good deal at times.

Kodak Commercial Ektars and Wide Field Ektars are pretty well ditto the Dagors. Be careful on the shorter lenses as a 190 mm Ektar will cover 5 X 7 but a 190mm Wide Field will do 8 X 10.

Artars need to be at least 30% longer than "normal" for a given format to assure coverage, hence 16 inch or above will do ya. The Goerz Trigor is suppossed to combine the coverage of the Dagor with the sharpness of the Artar, but they ain't cheap.

Watch for the older f/6.8 Angulons, a very good purchase, but often over-priced, it seems to me. The 210 is very nice for 8 X 10. The Wollensak Raptars (especially the 159 f 12.5) and anything marked "weitwinkle" i.e. German for "wide angle". There are some ludicrously tiny f/18 wide angle Protars that look small for even 4 X 5, but they'll cover too. And just to freak you out, don't pass up a Hypergon if you see a working one for less than $1k.

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), April 02, 1999.

p.s. check out

www.cs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/photography/lf

and www.schneideroptics.com among others

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), April 02, 1999.