Can a process camera lens be installed in a view camera?
Sure but it is of a different design. The process lens is designed to focus on a 2 dimensional object and project it to a 2 dimensional piece of film (or plate) with sharpness edge to edge. Whereas the photographic lens is designed to focus on a 3 dimensional object and project it to a 2 dimensional sheet of film. While I learned this in school years ago, I never did see the test results of any experiment with the two lenses head to head. It may well be that using the process lens would add a degree of artistic license … sort of like using a 4×5 view lens on a sheet of 8×10 film. I used to get about an 8 inch circle in the middle of the film and that turned out to be one of the favorite things an artist from the late sixties did for many years and I believe some of his work is hanging at MoMA.
