I got used to always having a camera at hand, a camera on which I can depend and which I can whip out almost instantly when something catches my eye. I guess my phone could have done the job, but hey, why keep it simple? I had some decent gear, not that bad an eye and a working knowledge of camera settings. I could take ok pictures of most things and I did. But I did not take that many photographs. Or good pictures really. First of all, it brought me to film — for real — as the prime tool I use for photography.
The fil rouge there was exhorting people myself first, then everyone looking at my work to actually look up. From their feet, their phones, their struggles, from anything holding them from looking at the world surrounding them. I spent quite a few hours wandering around the streets, on my daily commutes, while out for drinks, pretty much anytime during my daily life really, XA in the pocket, and looking around, looking up.
And I took photos of banal buildings. So bland, so boring — in theory. Not to anything in particular, but to at least open them and allow them to look and not just see.
I may have given in to a bigger rangefinder spot and the camera that goes with it , and so use a neck strap instead of my pocket, but the purpose remains.
And the XA remains. Just in case. I still feel just as comfortable with my tiny plastic box as I did on day one. Better than that even. I went and traveled Egypt, I went and commuted to work, I went and enjoyed holidays with an XA or two. I shot at night and in plain desert noon, I shot concerts and family portraits. The amount of work that went into the Olympus XA is staggering.
They pretty much invented internal focus lenses for this camera. Even the flash unit is incredibly well integrated. But the lens is sharp, the use reliable and the aforementioned meter almost impossible to fool. The only other thing that springs to mind when I think of game-changers is darkroom printing.
And that says a lot about the tiny Olympus! You can add your support by contributing your thoughts, work, experiences and ideas to inspire the hundreds of thousands of people who read these pages each month. Check out the submission guide here.
There's also print and apparel over at Society 6 , currently showcasing over two dozen t-shirt designs and over a dozen unique photographs available for purchase. I'm a young, self-taught photographer, inexorably drawn to analog grain and black and white prints.
Geometry soothes me while people rather scare me, I see the world as a multitude of details, sounds and See Virgil Roger's full profile and links. I love mine, but the light meter is out by about 3 stops.
Does anyone know if it can be adjusted? I read somewhere that the light meter has an adjustable resistor somewhere under the hood top-side if I remember well that you could use to hack it to ISO capabilities. Great article Virgil. More fool me; that little XA took photos that appeared full bleed on magazine covers, postcards and calendars, and I loved it. Not long ago, and full of remorse for parting with my little companion, I found a beautiful example on Ebay, and have now acquired another mint condition partner for it.
The appearance and design is just iconic and timeless. It also takes absolutely superb photographs! I just hope that my original XA found a happy home and is being used an looked after the way I did. Something tells me it has. Thank you Martin! Nicely done, Virgil.
It is always exciting to see other photographers as excited about the Oly XA as I am. It really is a workhorse of a little camera. In the years before phones etc, I used to take my XA2 while running. Oh the love! Thanks for sharing your love for the xa!
I agree with all you said… Many years ago it was the xa that opened me the doors to black and white photography and the world of rangefinders, and this became the beginning of an ongoing adventure.
I later left it because I was tired of the forced automatic exposure, and I courted more prestigious cameras… but then I went humbly back to it, asked for forgiveness, and never left it out of my backpack since. Brilliant review Virgil, thank you for sharing!
Seriously beautiful photos too. Do you have any developing tips? Okay, now look at the Olympus XA. And if it was, I suggest you shoot a job application over to your favorite camera company. But at the time of its introduction in , it looked like no camera that had come before it. Essential components, sure, but the XA executed them like nothing else on the market. The XA was meant to fit into a shirt pocket and retain full functionality, which meant a complete redesign of nearly every single component in the name of compactness.
The shutter button sits flush with the top of the camera, the focusing lever rests in a small crevice underneath the lens, and the aperture selector protrudes just a couple of millimeters from the face of the camera.
But the most radically designed component of the camera was not its controls, but its F. Lenses are often the enemy of compact design, as they traditionally protrude out from the camera and telescope in and out in accordance with the focusing mechanism.
Maitani determined this to be unnecessary and unacceptable, so he designed an all-new lens whose focusing mechanism would be found internally, eliminating the need for long lens barrels and that pesky telescoping action.
When all was said and done, Maitani got the camera he wanted, an impossibly small, fully-featured 35mm rangefinder camera fit for a shirt pocket and ready for nearly anything.
The Olympus XA completely changed the compact camera game, and in doing so kept Olympus right at the very top of that game well into the digital age. Its concise control layout also makes the normally baffling manual focus rangefinder incredibly easy to understand and operate, and combined with a particularly streamlined aperture-priority mode this makes for easy shooting. Its short focusing throw and easy, silent actuation combined with its small size means that the XA is ready for anything at any time.
For the scale-focusing street shooter, the streamlined XA can potentially be even quicker and more discreet than the fastest autofocus cameras.
It is one of the finest compact camera lenses I have ever used. The resolving power of this lens is simply unreal. No camera is perfect. The electromagnetic shutter button is nice, but sometimes it releases at the slightest touch, resulting in a couple of wasted frames per roll in clumsy hands like mine.
The redesigned lens renders images with some barrel distortion and it vignettes when shot wide open, flaws that may bother shooters who prefer a more clinical rendering. Much to my relief, I can say that the camera absolutely lives up to the hype. And for all of its serious, ingenious design, the XA is a fun-loving, carefree camera that encourages you to shoot, and shoot some more.
A camera like that deserves all the praise it gets, and even more still. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you.
This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support. Josh Solomon is a freelance writer and touring bassist living in Los Angeles.
He has an affinity for all things analog. When not onstage, you can find him roaming around Southern California shooting film and humming a tune.
It occasionally delays, or I have to press it multiple times to fire. The shutter release uses a bit of conductive material to make contact.
The shutter button does get dirty over time so it could probably do with a cleaning! The sticky shutter button is actually not that hard to fix.
There is a little butterfly plate inside the shutter switch that is responsible for the springiness that flattens over time. All you need to do is take the top off, take the switch apart, and bend the butterfly plate back to springiness and put it all back together. See, I felt the same way as Josh about this camera…for about a month. What could possibly be better than a prime lenses, full frame compact camera that can fit in a shirt pocket I asked myself.
But after I kept seeing the photos it took, and not being happy with them, it eventually dawned on me that the major issue was the lens that Josh was so happy to heap superlatives on. Once I got a Contax T I never looked back.
Of course I generally prefer contrasty negatives to get the look I want right from the film, so this is mostly a matter of personal taste. However if you just need a small machine to produce negatives for darkroom printing where contrast is controlled in post, then the XA gets very hard to beat.
I might be a little strange in this respect, but I like a more lo-fi option in some lenses if I can have it! The wind lever is on the bottom, as is, I believe the flash connector.
Imagine having to take a flash photo with the camera upside-down!! In short, the perfect take-anywhere pocket camera.
I dunno man, it seems like the Contax T is the XA kicked up several notches. With much better Ti construction, a better lens, fuller features and a nicer feel. You should be on the chamber of commerce! I have a hard time determining which I love more. But they are much more expensive than the XA, as you say. Tough call, very tough call.
True, but like you said or symbol-ed? I also think that the clamshell is more functional. Glad you enjoyed the article! Good suggestion too, maybe I should work for the city…. Josh, enough messing around with oversized cameras masquerading as compacts like this behemoth XA!
Borrow one of my Rollei As sometime and see how miniature is really done! Great article! The XA2 makes shooting even easier with zone focusing albeit slower lens. The Rollei 35 is also an amazing engineering marvel. Both are great cameras, just different. You can zone focus just as easily with the rangefinder in the XA. Cracking good review of a wonderful camera. I bought an XA2 a few months ago and loved it but experienced shutter sticking as noted above until it died totally and would not fire.
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