heltering with Benjamin Mosse

Recently I bought an Olympus XA2 that I saw in a shop here in Berlin for the price of a couple rolls of film. I also bought a couple rolls of film. The Olympus XA2, designed by infamous Olympus camera designer Yoshihisa Maitani, is a strange little beast of a camera. It’s a 35mm zone camera with a slow-ish f3.5 lens in a tiny package. The original, the XA, is a true tiny range finder. It wasn’t available for purchase but I’ll keep my eyes out.

What drew me to this cool-to-the-touch metal camera was that the lens does not protrude from the front of the camera while in use. The lens and viewfinder are revealed when you slide over the front side of the camera. You choose a zone (face, <1.2m; body ~1.2m; and landscape, >1.2m) with a little lever which springs back after you close the camera. There’s a big, beautiful and very sensitive red button you press to take a shot. The release of the shutter curtain is quite silent and you can effectively and surreptitiously wind the camera on under a table. This piece of 80s retro gear now sits in my bag, dwarfed by the D80.