Olympus XA: the Mju's Mum The Mju is a great little camera: autofocus, autowind, autorewind, spotmeter... It does it all for you.

Aha, but... Suppose you don't want it all done for you?

Suppose, in particular, that you didn't want the Mju to use flash? You can turn flash off, but it doesn't stay off once you've closed the camera and, while it's the only thing about the Mju that annoys me, it does annoy me.

Suppose you wanted something like a Mju, maybe Mju-sized, that you could control a bit more? No flash. Aperture control. Manual focus. You have to go back in time a bit, but it's possible.

Enter the Olympus XA.



Like the Mju, the XA has plenty of fans online, so I don't have to say too much. It's a compact rangefinder, with a 35mm/f2.8 lens (sounds familiar?) as well as the same sort of lens protection as the Mju. You set the film speed and the aperture manually. You focus using the lever below the lens (see below). When you release the shutter, the XA sets the film speed for you. Point, click and wind. Size wise, it's about the same as the Mju. XAs were produced between the mid-'70s and mid-'80s.



Guess what? I just got an XA for all the reasons outlined above. The Mju isn't going to be retired by any means, but I have noticed that most of the best photos I take seem to come from the Mju, so I wondered whether it's just because it's a small camera and I seem to worry less about what it's doing and more about what I'm shooting. Who knows. Anyway, I'll post a few XA photos when I get them. Time will tell.

You can learn more about the XA at diaxa.com's XA page, at Camerapedia, and also at the XA page on Karen Nakamura's Photoethnography site. The Other Martin Taylor also has an XA page. These links will also take you to FAQs and a manual in PDF.

OK. Now to scan some Mju photos. It's been a while since I had anything to show, but now I have some from Cyprus. Any day now!  ¶ 7:00 PM