Decent "Modern" 165mm for 5x7?

[Oren Grad]

165mm SA is right up there with the 155mm Grandagon.

The Grandagon comes in a #1 shutter rather than #3 and is several ounces lighter. But for my taste, either is way too much for 5x7 outside of the studio. If for some reason I felt compelled to try a 165 on 5x7, I'd go with the Angulon.

[Mark Tweed]

I had time this morning to perform a quick test. I took my Ilex 165mm f6.3 Acu-Tessar which I have set up for my 2X3 Graphic Century and mounted it on my 4X5 Wista and at infinity focus, you need to stop the lens down to f22 to get complete coverage (that's looking through the corners of the ground glass to confirm that the shutter aperture is completely round). Even at f22 there would be little room for movements, just a small amount of back tilt pushes it. I didn't even bother mounting it on my 5X7 as I know it wouldn't cover. One of my first lenses when I started out in large format (4X5) was a Wollensak 162mm f4.5 Raptar, which was a tessar design, and it wasn't long before I substituted it with a sweet 150mm, late run American Optical Dagor for the simple reason the 162mm tessar didn't allow much room for movements.

There is the 159mm Wollensak wide angle, it's slow but it would provide generous movements. My sample is sharp out to the corners when used on the 5X7 format.