APO_Artar and other Lens quality opinions

[sam alexander]

considering a longer lens for 4X5. Have options on three: a 16.6" Red Dot APO Artar in Copal 3. A 12" Red Dot APO Artar in Copal 3, and a Technica Symmar 5.6/240  12/420 convertable in Compur. Anyone have opinions on which of the three? Thanks.

[james mickelson]

Depends on what you want the lens to do. I'd opt for the convertable. More bang for the buck. It's nice on my 8x10 because I am only lugging one lens around instead of three. But the RD Artars are fine lenses too. And quite sharp. James

[Chad Jarvis]

You can't beat image quality produced with any RD Artar. We'll maybe you can, but not by much. I would recommend against the Symmar convertibles (here come the emails), since there is considerable degradation of image quality when using the "secondary" focal length. Naturally the Symmars have the advantage of reduced weight (two for one) and generally lower cost (again two for one, and just not as fine of a lens as a Goerz).