Olympus XA – Photography, Images and Cameras

This camera is small – really small. Originally produced in the 1980s it takes regular 35mm film cartridges and most amazingly has a built in, fully coupled rangefinder, even if it isn’t the brightest combined rangefinder/viewfinder I’ve ever seen. It has an extremely good 6 element, 5 group f2.8 35mm Zuiko lens, which doesn’t extend – don’t know how they did this. Since the rangefinder is not so stellar and the 35mm lens has great depth of field I’d be tempted to scale focus. Olympus must have thought so too because also came out with an XA2, which only scale focuses. I have one of these too. It cost me less than $10 and came with the separate flash. The flash, which attaches to the side of the camera, doubles the overall size but since I don’t use flash much it’s not a problem. The electronic shutter release requires a very very light touch. It’s very easy to set it off by mistake. I’ve read that the camera is prone to shutter failures – let’s see. If you want a very small unobtrusive 35mm film camera, especially one with rangefinder focussing, you should take a look at this.

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