Olympus XA

[Brian Moore]

Middle Reading Deck by brian-moore, on Flickr

This is the "Middle Reading Deck" at the main branch of the Huntington Beach Public Library in Huntington Beach, California. I used my Olympus XA and Legacy Pro 400 film. (The Legacy Pro 400 is sold by Freestyle--at least for now--and is supposed to be repackaged Fuji Neopan I think.) I developed this in Rodinal 1:100 using a 60 minute stand technique.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Great little camera the XA! I have an xa2 and have got some pretty decent shots out of it...
Not as nice as that one mind!
I've always wondered how good the RF in the XA is??

 

[Brian Moore]

Thanks a lot, Hamish. I find the XA's rangefinder difficult to use. Often I can't tell that my subject is in or out of focus unless I spend inordinate time manipulating the camera's position in relation to my right eyeball while squinting furiously. When the lighting conditions are right it's much simpler just to set the aperture at f5.6 and the focus at a middle distance and fire away.

 

[Hamish Gill]

I thought it might be a fiddley one!

I have thought about getting one quite a few times, but in the end decided the mju-ii would serve me better!
It always frustrates me that these slightly older compact cameras often have metering up to 800iso film.
When I was looking for a compact film camera I was using a lot of high iso b&w film, the mju-ii has dx film recognition up to 3200 iso, along with the nice 35mm 2.8 lens that I assume is quite similar to that of the XA's (apart from the 4 of course)

 

[Pete Askew]

Nicely exposed and composed Brian. I like it a lot. The 'stand' process seems to give nice control of contrast. Never tried it myself but I must (another thing to add to the list that this forum is populating for me!).

 

[Brian Moore]

Haha! I know what you mean Pete. I have a few tasks on my "wannado" list also. (But these always take second place to the "honeydo") Thank you for the comment.

Brian