I used my Beseler 45 as a light source for contact printing a wholeplate negative on Lodima. To do this I used a 4x5 negative carrier with a 150mm f/5.6 enlarging lens. I needed an 11 minute exposure with my V54 lamp, which was mighty boring.
There are some things I could do to cut down this time. First, I could turn up the intensity control on my Zone VI stabilizer, I've got about one stop more before it stops stabilizing (it's 1/4 stop per index mark, in case you were wondering). I can also focus the negative carrier opening more tightly on the contact printing frame. These two steps combined would get me, at best, a 2-stop illumination improvement, so I'd still be looking at ~3 minutes for many negatives.
Sure, I could spend big bucks for a 150mm f/4 APO-Componon HM and get another stop, but this is way overkill as I'm just "imaging" the negative carrier's opening. And I know for $10 I could get a reflector with a light bulb, but my workspace is tight and I'd like, if possible, to be able to use my existing setup.
It would be really cool if there were a cheap lens in the 135-150mm range that covered 4x5 and had an aperture around f/2.8. I'm not talking Xenar here, but cheap, with crummy image quality. It doesn't need an adjustable aperture. As a bonus, it would be light enough that it wouldn't tip over my enlarger (well, I'm exaggerating a bit, but a 150/2.8 will not be a lightweight). Maybe a simple lens from Edmund Scientific? Aberrations shouldn't matter.
Has anyone ever heard of a lens that would fit this bill, or is a reflector in my future?
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