Reviewed by
jamezhenry , Expert , from Sarnia

Price Paid
$1800.00 at Harry's Pro Shop

Photography Experience
21+ years , Fine Art

Summary
I recently purchased the Wisner 4x5 Flight because I needed something that I can take hiking. At 3.5 lbs this was just about the lightest and smallest camera available. My Deardorff is really too big and heavy. The Linhof Technica is also heavy and it really isn't very good with wide angle lenses.

Strengths
At 7"x7"x4.5" (plus knobs 2") the Flight is very small. It's half the weight of the Technica. It also has 20" of bellows draw for very long lenses and macro. Mostly I like wide angle so I purchased the Wide Angle bellows. I use a 65mm Grandagon. The setup for Wide Angle shooting is very similar to the Deardorff except the Wisner has an interesting feature called 'Top Focus'. Once the standards are tilted into position you can focus the rear standard indepedently.

Another thing I like is having detents on the standards. This way the camera snaps open square... no guessing.

Weaknesses
Rigidity is very good. In fact it's more solid at full extension than the Deardorff and is comparable to the Linhof in my opinion. It comes with a 1/4" thread only, however 3/8" would have been nice.

Similar Products Used
Sinar F1, Deardorff 45, Linhof Technica

Customer Service
Haven't required any customer service other than the purchase which was pretty straight forward. So far I'm a very happy camper.