180mm enlarging lens

[Jerry Cunningham]

Can a 180mm enlarging lens work for 4x5 enlarging ? If so, what is the drawbacks?
Sincerely,
Jerry

[Donald Hutton]

Yes - you need a little more height for the equivalent enlargement using a 150mm, but all else being equal, the 180mm will tend to have a larger image circle and you will be using a more central protion of it so you could have slightly better sharpness and less fall-off in illumination.

[Eric Wagner]

Yes. I use a 180 Rodagon on my Beseler 45. It is easier to see all the way to the edges of the image with the grain magnifier with the longer lens.

[Bob Salomon]

All things considered a 150mm modern lens will be corrected for better printing from a 45 then a 180mm will be.

For instance a 150 Rodagon is corrected for 2 to 10x while a 180 Rodagon is corrected for 2 to 8x prints. If you will be making large prints or doing much cropping the 150 would be better in this example. The 150 will also require less column height to reach a print size and this can also be a major factor. Even a 150 may be too long for some darkrooms so another choice would be a WA enlarging lens. The 120 Rodagon WA was corrected for prints up to 15x and would be a better performer overall then a 135 a 150 or a 180 unless you were considering an Apo enlarging lens. The other advantage to the 120 over a 150 is that it requires 30% less column to make the same size print as a 150mm.

[Jerry Cunningham]

Thank all of you for the advice. I now have data to think about.
Jerry

[Roger Scott]

One other thing to check is to ensure that you can get (or have made) and can fit a lensboard which will take the lens. Most 180mm lenses have a larger mount size (typically 72mm) than their 4x5 directed counterparts. The lensboards which my Durst 4x5 enlarger uses are unfortunately not large enough.

[Roger Scott]

PS ignore my previous message if you're using a 5x7 or bigger enlarger.