Intrepid Guides · Choosing Your Kit

The Large Format
Lens Explorer

Second-hand large format lenses come described in numbers that mean very little until you can see them. This tool turns those numbers into visuals. Pick any of the 120 lenses below and find out how much film it covers, whether that stretches to 5×7 or 8×10, how far you can push your movements, how wide it will look, and whether it will fit your lens board.

Covers

Focal Length

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Aperture Range

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Image Circle

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35mm Equivalent

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Shutter

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Weight

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01

Coverage And Movements

A lens projects a circle of sharp light. Your film is a rectangle sitting inside it. If the circle is only just big enough, the lens has to stay dead centre. If it is generously bigger, you can move the lens around and still have an image project onto your film — that spare room is your rise, fall, shift and tilt. Drag the film to feel where the lens runs out of movements.

Every image circle here is measured at f/22. Wide open the circle is smaller and softer at its edges, so a lens with only a little room to spare will have even less of it before you stop down.

↖ Drag the film
Movement used0.0 mm
Maximum rise—
Maximum shift—
Spare coverage—
02

Aperture

The iris inside the shutter. Wider (smaller f number) means more light and shallower depth of field. Stop the aperture down and you get a longer depth of field. Lots of lenses are sharpest a few stops down from the widest value.

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03

Angle Of Coverage

How wide a cone of light the lens throws. Focal length and this angle together make the image circle — which is why a wide lens gives you so much room to move.

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04

In 35mm Terms

Large format film is simply much bigger, so it takes a much longer lens to frame the same scene. Here is your film against a 35mm frame, and the lens that would match this view on a 35mm camera.

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05

Shutter And Lens Board

Large format lenses come mounted into their own shutter. There are three common sizes, and the size decides the hole you need in your lens board — so check this before you buy.

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06

Weight

Every gram hangs off the front standard, and a heavy lens on a light field camera is harder to keep steady — especially with the bellows racked out. Shown here against every lens in the list.

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About the data. Optical specifications come from two reference tables: “New Large Format Lenses for 4x5in” compiled by Michael K. Davis at largeformatphotography.info, and the lens specification list at graflex.org. Image circles are quoted at f/22 unless the lens is marked otherwise.

Movements and the 35mm equivalent are worked out live from the image circle and the film dimensions, so both shift as you move between 4×5, 5×7 and 8×10. Manufacturers quote coverage differently and older samples vary, so treat these as good guidance rather than gospel and leave yourself a little margin.

Lens missing? If you are looking at something that is not on this list, tell us what it is and we will add it — get in touch.

Shop Cameras

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