Re: Toho
I just took delivery on a (used) Toho 4 x 5, my first foray into LF, and I see it as a sturdy basic "idiot-proof" field monorail. It is surprisingly light and small. It is most likely to be the only ~3 pound monorail out there. It is a simple set of milled aluminum dovetailed pull-out rail plus standards, with some zero marks but no indents. Tilt and swing are zeroed by feel, no marks there, but since the parts are nice and squared, it seems pretty easy to get part A's edge parallel to part B. There is plenty of range in the movements. It does base tilts. Controls are simple friction controls - nothing geared on this camera, aside from a brass fine focusing gear track. The bellows/ground glass/lensboard holder unit mounts on the standards by one of two sets of dovetails corresponding to the shift clamp on the standards. Get your clamps loosened, slip in bellows in the orientation you want, tighten clamps. You can't rotate your ground glass while fully assembled, you need to loosen clamps, remove bellows/etc unit, rotate 90 degrees, re-insert into clamps. The seller changed the ground glass/ fresnel arrangement, so I haven't seen the original. Funky round lens boards. The whole unit seems maintenance free and sturdy. You might have to work a bit if you ever need a new bellows - this is a discontinued camera from a no-longer-operating manufacturer, and you might need to get custom work done.
If you are the sort that likes markings on the rail, to help in speedy setup, there's a user out there who glued a metal centimeter ruler on the rail side.
Now I just got this Tuesday night, so I have not had the chance to take it outside. I don't have the lens in hand yet, I am going to find and use an old 150mm copy stand lens from work that I salvaged from being dumped. (Geronar 3 element lens - it will give me a feel for using the camera, and isn't too bad stopped down).
