Tried Enlarger Lenses?

[Christopher Keth]

Hi. I just bought a couple enlarger lenses pretty cheaply off of ebay. A 7.5" Wollensak Raptar f4.5 enlarger lens and an 8.5" Ilex Paragon Anastigmat f4.5 enlarger lens. Has anyone used these to shoot 4x5 or 5x7? What were your results? I figured I'd try them for the price, hopefully I'll get a couple nice lenses to use for $ I can afford.

[Ernest Purdum]

Give them a try, what do you have to lose? I wouldn't expect good results at distances much more than a few feet, thoiugh. Large format enlarger lenses are intended to give their best results projecting onto paper only several times larger than the film. The f4.5 aperture of these lenses suggests that they are Tessar.types or similar highy asymmetric designs. These are pretty finicky when it comes to differences in subject/image ratio.

Maybe you'll luck out and get the pleasant soft focus effect so many people are apparently looking for these days.

[Christopher Keth]

Perhaps. That would be a welcome surprise. I'm rather fond of lenses with quirks and "character" all their own.

[Thomas Vaehrmann]

Hi Christopher,

enlarging lenses are designed for appr. 1:6 to 1:10 ratio so they shouldn't perform that bad. I've used Componons for normal situations means 1:20 with good results. And repro lenses such as Apo-Ronar or Artar are even computed for 1:1 ratio and most of us use them for shooting at infinity. I think you wouldn't be disappointed.

[ronald moravec]

You you are happy, keep using them. Modern enlarging lenses for LF rival the best ones for smaller formats.

I sold all the 1960 equipment because my Leica prints look better than the 4x5 that were such a pain to use. Later glass will get your LF prints to look like MF and 35mm but with better quality.

[Joseph O'Neil]

Sometimes the "quality" of an enlaring lens is matched to the enlarger you are using. I had an old Wollensak - 161mm I think, enlarging Raptar that I sued on an old Elwood, 4x5 enlarger, with diffusion head. Later when i bought a used Omega D2, I didn't like it so much.
Looking back over my prints, I now miss that old wollensak and have been looking to grab another one someday, and setup my old Elwood again. I definately get softe, less harp prints form that combination as compared to my Omega and my el-nikkors, but in some cases the "look" that I got off my elwood & wollensak was nicer for some subjects.

So i suppose it depends on what you are looking for. Photography is not always about the sharpest image, the tightest and smallest grain, the most brilliant colours, etc, etc.

Personally I woudl keep them, and if you want something better someday, keep a look out for a good, used more modern one, because you may find times you want to go back to the older one for some reason.

joe

[Dan Fromm]

As everyone has said, by all means try 'em out.

FWIW, I've tried a few relatively modern plasmat type enlarging lenses at distance. 4"/5.6 and 135/5.6 Enlarging Pro Raptars, 135/4.5 Saphir B, and 80/5.6 C.E. Rokkor-X, to be exact. Also a tessar type, 150/4.5 Saphir. All performed poorly. But trying is cheap and is the only way to find out.

Cheers,