After much pressure and advice to try a dagor for my 8x10 I finally bought a 180mm dagor. Being a wide angle sort of shooter this seemed like a good fit. Doing long exposures also lent itself to the inexpensive arena of the barrel lens. Well I have to say that this lens performs poorly. The corners are like mush and the entire image is very soft. This is what all the hoopla is about? Soft mushy images that lack contrast and detail. I was told by dagor lovers that the lenses are not sharp. I was also told NOT to enlarge images made with them. I guess this speaks to the low resolving power of the lens. If you are using 8x10 or bigger are you not doing it for the high res and tonal range? If you want to use a moldy oldy why not just use a rapid rectilinear? I have to say I think the dagor is lousy and clearly the optics people were right when they told me the dagor is a poor lens. Am I the only photograhper who feels this way? Sure seems like it. So whats the big deal w/ the dagor? Its also clear from reading posts that dagors of the same focal length have different coverages. This must speak to the sloppy manufacturing and poor selection of glasses. Didn't this lens also introduce the phenomena of focus shift? Ok, it was a revoultion in the late 1800's but today its just old. Excuse me if I like sharp images. I do use very old lenses for effect including the RR and some very poor quality wide angles. Just one opinion that goes against the grain.