The Shanghai Shenhao Professional Camera Co. was indeed at PMA and had their HZX45 field camera on display. The guy seemed a bit surprised when I asked to see it and proceeded to put it through its paces. The HZX45 had quite a bit of movement. It put my Toyo 45A to shame. It did some things that my Toyo won't, like back rise, and back axis and base tilts. The brochure also shows a GJ45, which appears to be a simplified HZX45 - it does not appear to have rise or axis tilt on the back. They also have an 8x10 CG810.

Everything seemed to be built OK, but, of course, I didn't get to really try to take pictures with it. I'm afraid that I'm not the best person to judge workmanship, as before PMA, the only LF camera I'd ever seen was my Toyo when it arrived in the mail. (Those of you who can actually walk into store to see and try an LF camera should count your blessings. The BIG photo store in the state of Florida has the only LF camera on a shelf that I know of - another Toyo 45A - although PMA wasn't an LF show, I saw more LF cameras there than I ever have in my life.)

I have the slick brochure and am going to scan it. The print is pretty small, so I need to scan it at a rather high resolution, so it will be a big file. My geocities site is packed and I don't think it will take it. Anyone want to host it?

Another thing of interest in the brochure. Seagull has two LF lenses - a 150mm/5.6 and a 180mm/5.6. They might prove to be an economical alternative to other choices.

The compendium hood looks remarkably like that for the Toyo 45A.

I'll post again when I have the scan done.

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-- John H. Henderson (jhende03@harris.com), February 12, 2001

Answers

Here ya go....

I had to scan at 150 dpi to make the small print legible and I JPEGged as much as I dare. I'm afraid the Chinese didn't fare as well as the English. There are four pages and they are about 200kB each.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Get them while you can. I'll need the web server space.

-- John H. Henderson (jhende03@harris.com), February 12, 2001.

Any word on US dealers?

-- sheldon hambrick (sheldon_hambrick@hotmail.com), February 12, 2001.

Hmmmm, metal parts of copper. Think that's correct, or is this a translation problem?

-- Sal Santamaura (bc_hill@qwestinternet.net), February 12, 2001.

The metal parts are made of "BRASS", if you can read Chinese, on all 4x5 cameras. There are four types of finishes: polished brass, white chrome, black chrome, and titanium. They offer seven 4x5 models, priced from $350 - $489, including S&H from the factory. All metal parts on their 8x10 models are made of stainless steel.

They told me that they have nothing to do with those "Iston" cameras.

-- Geoffrey Chen (Db45tek@aol.com), February 12, 2001.

So friends! I am happy to have been contributing a little bit to spreading this Shen Hao in the Large format community. Thanks To John and maybe Geofrey could help with translating some things which Shen hao has translated badly. A little correction the cheap models CGJ aren't built any longer. so there are a series of HZX45-810 but they are largely to do with finish or wether the camera has or not a wideangle bellows. On top of their price you have to add transportation and taxes (to be fair to those who are buying the camera through me.....).

-- Andrea Milano (milandro@multiweb.nl), February 12, 2001.

I emailed Seagull/Shen Hao about these cameras a little bit ago. This was the response I got. I found a number for Great Choice and called. They referred me to B&H and Calumet because Great Choice is a wholesaler and because B&H and Calumet sell the Seagull TLR. Neither B&H nor Calumet carry the Shen Hao LF cameras. I'm thinking I may have to have my local shop call Great Choice and see what it would take to get me one. Anyone with a business license want to look into it?

Great Choice contact info:

Great Choice Inc 3341 Gulfstream Ln Marietta Georgia 30062-5541 Tel: (770) 977-4368 Fax: (770) 971-3234

**Email from Seagull camera**

Dear Mr.Dave, Thank you for your e-mail of Dec. 23,2000. For Seagull large format camera, you may contact the company as follow. GREAT CHOICE INC. MR.JACK HOLT 3341 Gulfstream Lane,Marietta,Georgia 30062 U.S.A.

If there will be any problem, please contact me. Our address is as follow. SHANGHAI SEAGULL CAMERA CO.,LTD. Tel No. 0086-21-63213020 Fax No. 0086021063213892

Best regards. Xia Yi Mai Dec.25,2000

-- Dave Willis (willisd@medicine.wustl.edu), February 12, 2001.

Hi All, I looked into these cameras last year. I emailed them repeatedly until they responded. In the end, if I remember, it seemed like the easy thing to do was just buy a Wisner. You send the factory a check for the camera and shipping, and then you pay the import duty which in Canada is going to significant. All this considered, how much is a 4*5 field camera going to cost you in US$ ? Just wondering if they are so good a deal. David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), February 12, 2001.

"The metal parts are made of "BRASS", if you can read Chinese, on all 4x5 cameras."

If we can't read Chinese, on all 4x5 cameras (or on even one of them), what are the metal parts made of?

-- Dan Smith (shooter@brigham.net), February 12, 2001.

I have archived the scans of the brochure at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/photography/lf/cameras/shenhao/

-- Q.-Tuan Luong (luong@ai.sri.com), February 12, 2001.

Dan,

They are probably just paper for you. Cheers :-) Again, The Shenhao folks will come to New York City to me on 2/15. If you anyone's interested in playing their cameras, just let me know.

-- Geoffrey Chen (Db45tek@aol.com), February 12, 2001.

Well, when I looked at the cameras, the metal was definitely not copper, and I don't read Chinese.

Copper would be too maleable.

-- John H. Henderson (jhende03@harris.com), February 13, 2001.

I'm sorry I misspelled "Shen Hao" as "Sheng Hao" in the file names. I hope I haven't insulted anyone!

-- John H. Henderson (jhende03@harris.com), February 13, 2001.