I recently bought a Nikon 105 F 5.6 lens for my Wista 45 large format camera. I got it for a good price but now I understood the reason for that. I want to use this lens as a wide angle on my view camera (it is probably equivalent to around a 32 mm lens in standard 35 mm terms) but when I ordered it I didn't realise that so-called ‘coverage’ could be a problem. The coverage of a lens is important when you use tilt, swings and other movements on a view or other form of large format camera. It seems that the Nikon lens I bought is right on the borderline as to whether or not it will work effectively for the 5x4 format and allow movements to be made using the camera to correct perspective etc.

After some research on the web I found the link below which might be useful to others to avoid making the same mistake. It shows the coverage of many widely available lenses that can be used on large format cameras.

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/lenses/LF4x5in.html

I have since experimented with this lens on the camera using a variety of movements to see whether or not they would induce vignetting, that is dark corners on the negative because of insufficient lens coverage. Luckily it appears that the image circle of the lens is sufficient to use on my camera stopping down as far as F 22, although as yet I haven't tried using it with any extreme forms of tilts or swings of the front standard or stopped down beyond F 22.

Below I have included one of the images taken with this lens using a degree of rise on the front standard. No vignetting resulted. However, in future I will pay more attention to lens coverage if I end up buying any additional lenses for my 5x4 camera.

Image taken using Nikon 105 F 5.6 lens on Wista 45