Olympus XA

Olympus XA is a marvel of photographic engineering of late 70s, everybody will tell you this. I wouldn't be one to disagree. It's equipped with a perfectly sharp and fast 2.8/35mm Zuiko lens that you focus with nice and bright rangefinder. It operates with aperture priority driven light metering that's almost always spot on. The shutter is extremly quiet making it perfect for street shots where you don't want to draw attention to yourself. All held in an insanely small package that protects the lens with its iconinc clam shell cover. It's a legend.

But how does the legend handle?

It's a quick camera. The rangefinder base isn't long so your focusing should be within the realm of accuracy rather than super precise. The rangefinder spot is good, although commonly known is its disappearing act when you shoot into the sun. The lightemeter is great and works under most lighting situations. The lens is sharp-sharp. There is a backlight compensation lever at the bottom that does a lot of thinking and re-setting for you. And, everything falls intuitively into your hands. It was made to be worked without much thought, even though there is a sensible amount of controls, if you ever need to take things slower.

It all breaks down into this: 

You need two hands to operate it, if you want to be precise in your metering. If you spend a bit more time adjusting your settings and frame, the photo is going to be great. 

But you only need a couple of seconds, and one hand, to frame your image and fire the shutter if you set the camera to hyperfocal (f/5.6 and 3m marked in orange on the camera). And a lot of the time, the photo is going to be great too.

I mostly used the latter with the photos below. 

Conclusion?

While this camera is not among my most favorite ones, as I prefer to work slower and with more precision, it is an amazing tool for the right job. I never was and probably will never be much of a street photog, even though I did put some serious effort into it for a time. In street conditions, the XA is the camera to go for, or at the very least, to give an honest try to. It is a legend for a reason.