I recently found a working Olympus XA2, in box with the accessory flash, from a local thrift store (Indoor Flea Market, on Lomas in Albuquerque), and had a first go with a roll of Kodak C-41 B/W film. The seller had three such cameras in his booth, and I was able to find a body I could confirm worked with existing silver oxide batteries, with the box and working flash, for a good price.
These little gems were designed by the legendary Maitani Yoshihisa and came to market in the early 1980s, and were the forerunner of the venerable Stylus/MJU series of the 1990s. While the XA1 had manual rangefinder focusing, the XA2 was intended for beginners, hence featured a three-position focusing lever for zone focusing, but were later appreciated by street photographers because they could be preset to one of three focus distances without raising camera to face, helpful in those candid street situations.
The optical viewfinder is very bright and clear, is positioned directly above the lens and features very clear framelines.
I found the focus pretty easy to master, once I understood the preset focus distances involved, and could easily estimate subject distance and adjust my framing and position accordingly. Using adequately fast film in bright daylight, intermediate distances are resolved to adequate focus by means of the depth-of-field afforded by the lens aperture, which is automatically selected by the exposure system.
All of the frames I exposed came out with good focus and exposure, which surprised me a bit. I had dry tested the camera, prior to loading film, and was pretty certain the shutter worked okay, but was still uncertain of the results until I got the prints back from the lab, yesterday.
I've included several images as examples, which are scans from the prints. Film scans would be sharper, obviously.
~Joe
The camera:
In my back yard:
At UNM:
At the Frontier Restaurant, across from UNM:
School of Architecture building, at UNM:
