Recommendations: Small 135mm with good coverage for 4x5 portraits?

Irises became fewer bladed in the 1950's for some brands. It's interesting to see cameras like expensive 1960's collectible Rolleiflexes have fewer aperture blades than older automat versions but I don't think they make as nice a photo all other things being equal. I think it was a subjective thing that costs happened to favor. If you look for LF lenses and want a smooth round iris and lens coating, look for a generation post-WWII. Not too new.... Later Copal-3 and 3s seem to have a pretty close to round iris but don't meet the small requirements. It's a small subset of available lenses. 35mm camera companies are fully onboard with making super round irises now. Sigma art lenses are this way and the newer Nikon high end lenses all brag about the blade quantities and smoothness. Until recently you could tell if a photo was Nikon or Canon from counting the sides in a bokeh hotspot or sunburst. There is no real overwhelming need for new LF shutters until used ones are no longer operable. It would be a tough sell.

One of the prime reasons why the preference for lenses in barrel to be used with Sinar shutter.

Lenses from Kodak, Goerz, Schneider, Zeiss Jena, Boyer and many others have lens barrels with nice round iris which becomes significant if the larger apertures some of these lenses offer are used at near full aperture (about f5.6_f11).

Process lenses with aperture stop inserts allows for aperture cards of various aperture shaped from round to a variety of polygons.

Sinar shutter provides consistent and accurate shutter speeds regardless of lens being used with the Sinar shutter.

The above might not meet the small lens needs of field camera folks. It is all part of view camera trade-offs with no single solution meeting all requirements for all view camera users and needs.

Not just the current crop of digital camera lenses have gone full in on round iris, the film making aka Cine folks have been doing this for a long time. Then again, these folks commonly spend many thousands in monetary funds on their lenses and are willing to spend what is required to service and maintain their optics.

Consider what happened to the round iris view camera lens as a by product of the everything in focus, stop down to f22 and smaller orthodoxy and priesthood doctrine of group f64.


Bernice

It's a complicated subject. I have lenses with over 20 aperture blades that have horrible bokeh, and some with only 6 with lovely bokeh. I suspect that one of the reasons apertures were simplified was not only due to cost but for sake of better robustness. Being able to select from barrel as well as shuttered lenses can be an advantage; but there are plenty of other ways to strategize portraiture. Often in "environmental portraiture" we might want everything in relatively good focus anyway, without worrying about blur rendition. I've done it all kinds of ways, even lenscap exposure.

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Originally Posted by Bernice Loui

Reality of this happening is about .... zero...

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That's too optimistic. Less than zero. :)

Curious which lens with the 20 blade iris with horrible bokeh?

Which lens with 6 iris blades with lovely bokeh?

Yes it is FAR more complex than just iris shape for bokeh, there is also how specular highlight and flare shape is rendered with any given lens and iris shape.


Bernice

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

It's a complicated subject. I have lenses with over 20 aperture blades that have horrible bokeh, and some with only 6 with lovely bokeh.

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