Amateur Photographer - UK (2021-11-27)

38 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk

Testbench IN THE FIELD

At a glance

£50 - £60second-hand

l 3 5mm compact with

clamshellcover

l 35mm f/3.5 lens

l Shutter speeds 2sec - 1/750sec

l ISO range 25- 16 00, DX coding

lCentre-weighted meter

l Uses two SR44/LR44 batteries

T

he revolutionary
Olympus XA was the
brainchild of Yoshihisa
Maitani, Olympus’s
famed camera designer and the
man who, in a quest to deliver
superb quality in a compact form,
had previously gifted the world
the OM series as well as the Pen
half frame cameras.
Yet despite Maitani’s earlier
successes, the XA was
considered by some to be his
greatest achievement and was
ground-breaking in so many ways
when it was launched in 1979.
Born out of Maitani’s desire to
have a camera that could fit in a
shirt pocket and be carried
anywhere, his innovative
clamshell design offered sleek
lines as well as protection for the
super-sharp 35mm f/2.8 F.Zuiko
lens that continued to outperform
its peers long after its release.

Even today, over 40 years on, it

retains its status as one of the

best 35mm compact film

cameras ever made.

Maitani’s XA was in fact the

first of five ‘XA’ cameras to adopt

this same design, a concept

which was later utilised in

Olympus’s hugely popular Mju

cameras. As an aperture-priority

rangefinder, the pro-spec’d XA is

undoubtedly the pick of the bunch

when it comes to desirability and

functionality. Like any popular

older sibling, it was a hard act to

follow, particularly as the stripped-

back models to come were aimed

squarely at the amateur market.

First, with the XA2 in 1980, and

then the XA3 in 1985, Olympus’s

more budget-friendly offerings

lost both rangefinder focusing

and aperture-priority control.

Despite this, they still packed a

punch in terms of image quality.

Compact

classic

Matt Parry makes his case for the

Olympus XA3, an oen-overlooked

sibling of the XA, to be considered

the ultimate ‘take everywhere’

35mm point-and-shootfilm camera

The Olympus XA 3

At this point I should say that

I own the XA, XA2 and XA3 and

I am a big fan of all of these

cameras. Yet it often surprises

people when I say that the XA3

is my pick of the bunch.

It was the first film camera I

bought back in June 2017 (for

just £33.50 on eBay) soon after

I started shooting film again. At

the time I was using a relatively

modern Canon EOS SLR, but I

wanted a compact camera that

I could take everywhere.

My first impressions were

mixed. The feather-light shutter

was frustratingly sensitive, the

viewfinder poor and I had never

Above: Krabi, Thailand

Olympus XA 3 & Agfa Vista 2 00