Bronica GS-1 external flash question

[flavio81]

Hello,

I've been using a Bronica GS-1 for the last 12 months and I was quite recently given a small Vivitar flash by someone as they were clearing their house. I didn't think it would work with the Bronica but I just wanted to check in case I am completely wrong. Here are a couple of photos of the flash.

Thanks!

Tom

Hi Tom, fellow Bronica (ETR system) user.

The GS-1 was a very expensive camera and it's a deluxe instrument. It was the last SLR designed by Bronica, the culmination of 23+ years of camera design and making. To make them, Bronica moved lens manufacture to a new, fully state-of-the-art factory (most modern at the time) and brought out the PG lenses (and then the PS and PE lenses using the same technology and factory) aimed specifically to be on top of every other manufacturer including Zeiss. And they did -- PG lenses on magazine tests did match or surpass the then current Zeiss primes for Hasselblad. They pulled out ALL stops with the GS-1, it was "make it or break it" for them.

So...

Treat it with respect, don't fit a cheap flash on top of it. The original Bronica flash for it appears from time to time on eBay, it isn't expensive. Or a fine flash with low trigger voltage, like a Metź unit. Just to show some respect for the brilliant engineers.

(But it wasn't a sales success. I think Bronica shot themselves on the foot by not fitting a rotating back. Studio photographers don't care too much about size or weight, and the rotating back of the Mamiya RB/RZ are a godsend on tripod, plus the bellows too is great on studio. So that one was the king of 6x7 cameras. Bronica wanted to make a more portable 6x7, but the photographer that wants portability and shooting handheld out in the field probably just chose to carry a Bronica ETR, Bronica SQ, or any of the other 6x4.5 offerings from Pentax and Mamiya.

 

[itsdoable]

So this elecronic sync switch is a myth? And it s "just" about the risk of high trigger voltage going astray?

No, what I'm saying was, the service diagrams of cameras will show a mechanical switch on the shutter regardless of the use of a electronic switch (ie: FET) to trigger the flash, because something has to tell the flash, or electronics, when the 1st curtain is open.

Most film cameras from that era just wired the flash contact to that switch, even those with AE.

Electronic flash triggering started when in body TTL flash control became popular, most flashes used a low voltage trigger, as the camera body electronics needed to signal the flash to cut off, which used a FET, Placing the FET in the flash was more reliable, so only a low voltage signal from the camera was necessary.