That's the nub of the matter. FWIW, I had a 5x12 Canham for a while; also, I've had extensive experience with Phillips cameras in various formats and with one Chamonix.
The Canham was beautifully made, and Keith Canham has a fine track record of customer support. But I was never comfortable with it. For my taste the controls were too complex and fiddly, and I had to re-learn everything whenever I set the camera aside for a while. I'm more comfortable with the Phillips-type controls, and also with the more rigid front and especially rear standards of Phillips-type cameras.
But if you read through the archives here, you'll find that there are very satisfied owners of Canham cameras, too. So it's not so much a question of which is better in any absolute sense as of figuring out which suits you better. Unfortunately, that's hard to do just from reading about them. The ideal would be if you could find people within hailing distance who own one or the other type and would be willing to let you come and have a look.
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