On advice I replaced it with a Camellion silver oxide battery 4SR44 and it has worked fine since. The problem with the display on the AE metered viewfinder had to do with the battery. When it comes to handheld 6×7 SLR, it’s a clear winner! Here are some of the results. The more I use this camera the happier I am. The GS-1 is a well designed, and well executed tool that can meet the needs of a wide variety of photographers. It is great for weddings, on and off the tripod. It is small and light enough to go on the road and be hand held. While the Mamiya cameras are primarily designed for studio work, the GS-1 is probably more versatile. The GS-1 is like the RZ and unlike the RB in that it is electronic, thus requiring a battery. Unfortunately, the GS-1 (like almost every other camera in the world) requires you to rotate the entire camera to change orientation. The huge advantage of the Mamiya cameras is the signature feature, the rotating film back.

And while all three systems control aperture from a ring on the lens, the GS-1 is the only one that controls shutter speed from the camera body and not the lens. While the Mamiya 6×7 cameras use bellows and focus like a large format field camera, the GS-1 has the more conventional focus ring on the lens. But the focusing mechanism is quite different. There aren’t too many other cameras like that. This camera is most likely to get compared with the Mamiya RB and RZ lines because they are similar in design i.e. Lenses are fairly easy to find, although the 80/3.5 is rather rare. It was also the only 6×7 camera to offer ttl flash with the dedicated flash gun. There is a full line of accessories, including a rotating view finder that makes portrait orientation much easier. It’s as solid of a chunk of camera as you could ever want. But there is nothing flimsy about this body at all. Even though it is a 6×7 the body is relatively compact and light since they used more plastic than the other models. The GS-1 is superior in terms of design, quality of the lenses and smoothness of function. It’s the biggest of the three lens shutter Bronicas (ETR, SQ, GS-1) The lenses were so good that after this PG Zenzanon line was released Bronica decided to upgrade all of their lenses for the other two cameras as well, using the same technology.

It is was released in 1982, shoots a 6×7 frame (or smaller depending on the film back) and there were never any upgrades to this model. The GS-1 is the last SLR ever made by Zenza Bronica. There is something special about any camera when you know that it represents the pinnacle of a given manufacturer’s efforts.

Bronica rf645 vs mamiya