If you’re interested in street snapshots and want to be elusive, travel light, and yet get reliable results, then this little gem is for you. It is small enough to be concealed in your palms and make everyone think that you’re NOT a professional photographer! (Erm, that doesn’t sound right.) However, this camera was described as the camera professional photographers take on their vacations.

Introduced in 1975, the 6 element F. Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 lens is very sharp—especially past f/5.6 where it attains 56 LP/mm. This manual focus camera has a coupled rangefinder which focuses down to 0.9 meters and employs aperture-priority metering. It even has a +1.5EV exposure compensation for backlighting. The electronic shutter is extremely quiet and accurate, and it uses A76/LR44 batteries that are still easily available today. It is only the XA that has a coupled rangefinder but not the XA2, 3, and 4—which I find important for street art photography.

I’m selling this clean and fully-working little gem with an equally fully-working A11 flash, the display hard case, the external cardboard box, instruction manual, and its guarantee paper (expired, of course). All for just S$200 only.

What you see below was what I got between 15 to 19 September 2009 at Karon beach, Phuket; using Fuji Superia 200. With this camera, I believe you can yield better photographs than what I have:

Above: The XA’s aperture-priority metering is tack accurate in such differentiating lighting condition (Essential if you do colour street photography).

Above and below: The XA’s electronic shutter is extremely quiet and responsive (One of the basic requirements for street photography).

Above: A useful +1.5EV exposure compensation function for backlighting conditions.

Below: Packshot of the camera which you are getting. Batteries included.

XA_A11

[Update on 4 Nov 2009: Camera sold.]