Got the camera, can't decide on lens.

[David R Munson]

Raven, I absolutely recommend buying a Rodenstock Geronar. I got started in 4x5 about a year ago and bought a 150mm Geronar used in excellent condition for about $250 from KEH (www.keh.com). The Geronar series are, as far as I know, availabe in at least three lengths (90mm, 150mm, and 210mm), and can be bought used just about anywhere. The lens is wonderfully crisp and would give you as much sharpness as you would probably ever need. Sure, if you can afford it, go for a new lens w/ED glass. However, you'll get more bang for your buck with the Geronar than with just about any other lens. Good Luck!

[Robert A. Zeichner]

Raven, There are probably dozens of lenses that will do the job for you, assuming the one you select has adequate coverage and is in good working order (shutter accuracy is important when shooting color transparency material). If you want to do something that could quite possibly help you avoid sharpness problems and numerous trade-ins of lenses that were all perfectly fine, test your ground glass alignment! With a used camera, this is particularly important because you don't know what someone else did to the thing in an effort to "improve" it. The addition of brightening screens can, if they're installed incorrectly, throw ground glass focus off by a mile. f64 won't help that problem either! Sometimes, a well meaning person will remove the screen to clean it and lose or forget to replace shims in exactly the same order. This can result in similar misalignment. Read my article in the Nov./Dec. issue of ViewCamera and you'll gain some insight to the importance of all this and perhaps, save yourself a heap of trouble and money! Best of all, you'll get to realize the performance that any of those dozens of lenses are capable of right from the start. I might also suggest downloading a Quick Disc at the following location. http://www.salzgeber.at/disc/index.html This will help tremendously in compensating for bellows extensions needed in doing close up work! Best of luck to you.

[Robert A. Zeichner]

I suppose it would help if I mentioned that article was in Nov./Dec. 1996 issue of ViewCamera.