Fujinon Fujinon-CM-W 150mm f/5.6

On a 4x5 camera, 150mm is the lens you mount first and probably the one you never take off. It sits right at normal, somewhere around a 43mm field on 35mm if you do the diagonal math, and Fuji built the CM-W version of it to be the sharp, sensible default for working pros who didn't want to pay German money. The "CM" stood for Commercial, the name Fuji gave its final large-format line; the "W" meant wide coverage. The EBC multicoating is a separate thing, the layered coating Fuji put on the glass, and it's a big part of why this lens behaves the way it does in contrasty light.

Get the era right, because the marketing around these lenses muddies it. Fuji completed the CM series in 1994, so this is late large-format glass, not a mid-80s design. It went up against the Apo-Symmar and the Apo-Sironar-N, the modern multicoated plasmats of that generation, and held its own optically while undercutting both on price. The construction is six elements in six groups, fully air-spaced. That's worth saying plainly because plenty of writeups still call it a six-four plasmat, which it isn't. The flat field and clean corners come from the air-spaced design and good coating, not from any old symmetrical layout around the shutter.

What it draws is exactly what you'd expect from a late-90s pro lens built for copy stands and architecture. Wide open at f/5.6 the center is already crisp and the corners are soft, but you don't shoot view cameras wide open. Stop down to f/22 and the whole frame comes up sharp with even contrast and a neutral color rendering from the EBC coating. The image circle is the practical reason people pick the W series: Fuji lists 223mm at f/22, which gives you genuine room for front rise and tilt before the corners darken. Treat that number as optimistic for critical work and you'll still have plenty of movement on 4x5.

Backlight is where the coating earns its keep. Put the sun just outside the frame and an older single-coated plasmat will veil, while this one holds contrast and keeps shadow separation. It is not a portrait lens and was never sold as one. It records the scene cleanly and gives you nothing extra, no glow, no falloff to hide behind, which is precisely why some shooters find it cold and others love it for documentation and repro.

The honest limit is that normal is all it is. The coverage that feels luxurious on 4x5 gets tight the moment you try to push it onto 5x7 with movements, and at that point you want a 180 or a real wide-field design. There's no quirk to make it collectible either, so it competes purely on being sharp and cheap.

That last part is the whole reason it still sells. The CM-W 150 trades for less than the equivalent Rodenstock or Schneider, people cross-shop all three, usually decide the optics are a wash, and buy on price and shutter condition. It lives in a Copal 0 leaf shutter, so flash syncs at every speed up to 1/500, handy for studio and fill work. When you rack the bellows out for a close subject, meter the scene and let Zone Light Meter compute the bellows extension factor. At still-life distances on 4x5 you can drop a stop or more, and a plain handheld reading will leave the film thin.