I've had and used many 4x5s ranging from a very old Calumet to a new Linhof Technika but always ended up liking the Sinar Norma best. They can be had for amazingly reasonable prices on EBay. Small systems seem like the best bargains. Used wide angle bellows are always available. I picked up an Arca-Swiss rigid reflex finder for little money and easily adapted it to the Sinar and later found a binocular Sinar reflex finder. Arca-Swiss for the road and Sinar for around the house. Sinar f series are compact and light but at a cost (still are excellent cameras). P variants work like a dream but not exactly portable. FYI: Fred Picker from The Zone VI Workshop used a Sinar Norma. Had many a conversation with him and he swore by (not at) it.
Also look for hidden bargains... Found one on EBay that was in a studio fire and I bought it for almost nothing. I looked very closely at the images of it and determined that it had only superficial smoke damage. Hint was that the bellows were undamaged by heat. 2 evenings of cleaning it up and it looked absolutely like new!!!
http://www.glennview.com/sinar.htm contains a whole lot if info about the system
Some things to look out for:
Bellows with pinholes are easily repairable
Chinese Linhof boards and board adapters vary in quality.
Make sure all the bubble levels are full of liquid.
Make sure the black caps on top of the standards (4 of them) are there. Those little caps, vertical extensions for the standards, and front lens hood pieces are getting to be rare and are demanding high prices.
Good luck and remember whatever camera you acquire, the lens determines the image quality and you frame the image... the camera body only is a light tight, hopefully rigid, box.
Greg
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