I’ve got one of these Beseler E.F. Projection lenses sitting on my desk. I may have paid about $30 for it some time back, just because it seemed cool, but now and then I think about shooting with it. I didn’t know the coverage and just found that like many things someone else has already wondered the same and done some experimenting. Charles Hollemeersch reports that his 18in lens will cover nearly 35x42cm so sounds like it would cover 11x14in film so I can use it with my frankencam! I have a 14in and so maybe coverage will be less. Aperture seems to be about f/3.7 on the 14inch. So pretty fast!
I saw lenses similar to this pop up a few times on wet plate sites and groups, usually surrounded by little concrete evidence on the usability for wet plate, sharpness, coverage, … so this &#…