I know this question has probably been asked repeatedly, but bear with us please. My wife (Angie) and I (Nick) are new to LF. We love landscape photography, and travel the world each year as much as we can, in the pursuit of beautiful landscapes and scenes to photograph. We are looking to buy our first 4x5 and have narrowed the field down to the 2 obvious new cheaper field cameras:

Tachihara 45BR WoodField and the Shen-Hao HZX4x5-II A.

We have already purchased a couple of good condition second hand lenses:
Schneider-Kreuznach Angulon 90 / 1:6.8 and a Schneider Symmar-S 5.6/210mm, and will more than likely further this small colllection once we have found our LF footings. We also have lens boards for these lenses, a swag of double darks and a tripod with ball head, etc, so the camera is likely to be the final purchase in the setup.

We, well in particular, I have spend the last 3 months reading and reading about LF, techniques, cameras, etc, including a few very passionate postings regarding camera choice. I love the look of the Tachiharas, in particular the black rosewood 45BR, and from what I can read, has movements that are more than adequate for general photography and in particualar landscape. It is also very lightweight which will be a great asset in our travels, especially considering the fact that with 2 of us fighting over the LF, we will definately have to have an SLR or dSLR with us, and all of the other paraphenalia that you naturally take with you.

The Tachihara was my definate choice until reading the forums here last night, and reading about the Shen-Hao 6x17 roll back, and that got us very interested. We love the work of Ken Duncan and the likes, and feel that this format could be great fun to experiment with. This has suddenly opened up the possibility of the Shen-Hao once more.

The Shen-Hao, has wider range of movements, which could be useful, especially if we start to take a closer look at architectural photography. The thing that bothers me are the comments regarding build quality. As this is our first camera, I am not sure that we will notice any failings as it will be the 1st LF that we will have played with, or even held for that matter. (We live in Australia and there seems to be very very little in the way of new equipment to buy, and the stores have to order in specially for you)

So, I am starting to waffle on a little, so I will call it a day here, apart from to ask the question, what do you all feel to be the pros and cons of each camera, and is it worth chosing the Shen-Hao over the Tachihara primarily so we can play with the 6x17 roll back.

Thanks very much for you patience in reading this post, and we look forward to your comments