This is the most compact range finder I own… in fact I’m pretty sure its the smallest rangefinder anyone can own.
This little gem was the flagship camera of the Olympus XA line. Paving way for perhaps the most famous of the line, the Olympus XA2.
Made by Olympus Between 1979 and 1985. the designer was a man called Yoshihisa Maitani , he was credited with the creation of of some of the most prolific camera lines that Olympus ever made including the XA, OM and the cameras.
The XA has been dubbed as “the camera that professionals take on holiday” and it’s easy to see why. The ability to control focus and having aperture priority on a platform as small as this is a difficult thing to do. The compact form factor make it a dream to keep in your pocket and yet it doesn’t compromise on image quality either!
The camera came bundled with the A16 flash unit. An amazingly powerful and compact flashgun. It automatically syncs with the camera for perfect flash images every time.
The flash is completely removable, incase you want to make the camera as small as possible. Which adds to the overall versatility of the camera.
The d.zuiko lens is a wonderful piece of work and was kept across the whole XA line, making these cameras perform beautifully with minimal distortion and amazing low light performance. The automatic flash capabilities make them a force to be reckoned with as the image quality easily matches that of higher end SLR cameras of its time. The only problem with this camera, and in fact the whole XA line is in its fixed lens choices. Not that I’m dragging them at all, I just sometimes need a camera that has a longer focal length, you can’t shoot everything on a 35mm lens after all!
RPeterThomas Photographic 
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