Fellow photo.netters,

I need advise on purchasing a new lens. I'm very new to LF photography, having j ust purchased a 4x5 Speed Graphic this summer. However, I am hooked. The 127mm K odak on the Graflex, however, is a sorry thing, full of fungus, scratched up, an d the shutter gets wildly inaccurate on the slow settings. So. I bought another 127mm Kodak f/4.7 on eBay... and the seller shipped me a projector lens in the s ame focal length. So I bougth a second one. Its shutter was completely inoperati ve. (I feel like the King of Swamp Castle in that Monty Python movie, constantly building castles) So I bought a THIRD one, this time on eBay, and not only is t he shutter inoperative (only fires at 1/400), but it has strings of fungus that go from one end of the internal elenments to the other. And of course the seller , like the first three, refuses to refund my money. ("Lens was sold AS IS!")

So by now I've dropped over $200 on useless lenses, and have vowed to never, eve r, buy a used lens of eBay again. But now I'm stumped: the selection of new lens es in 4x5 is staggering. What I need is a medium wide-angle for landscapes, a ki nd of new variation that old Kodak tessar, that will fit on my old Graphic. It n eeds to be a shutter lens, 'cause the focal plane on the Graphic is a bit dodgy. You guys have been doing this for a long time; if you could go back in time to when you were first starting 4x5 LF, but knew what you know now, what lens would buy to serve this need? Or even, what brand?

Thanks in advance. -mb