The olympus XA2

The Olympus XA2, is it good? What about street photography? I quite recently acquired the Olympus XA2 and from what i had read it seemed like a good small pocketable camera, especially for the price(i paid £30 for the camera in good con W/ A11 flash, box and manuals), I would say a great competitor for the LC-A+ and in my opinion better when one considers the cost. The camera is made from mostly plastic, a clamshell design,  although that being said it does feels well build and sturdy in the hand, definitely not like some other plastic cameras. On the front of the camera, for protection of the lens it feature a sliding lens cover, which must be open to fire the shutter which is quite helpful if you were to search for it in the depths of a bag or pocket and accidentally hit the shutter release. On the subject of the shutter release it uses a flat electromagnetic shutter which sits flush with the camera which does have its downsides, there is no threads for a shutter release cable and it takes very little pressure to fire the shutter but over use you should get use to that. Other features and specs that the camera has. It is a viewfinder camera which means there is no viewable focus system such as a range finder the focusing is just done buy guess work or perhaps if you measure the distance yourself. on the bottom plate you will find a standard tripod mount, a small switch which can either be set to check the battery (it will make a noise if the battery is fine) and the self timer which i believe is 10 seconds long, the battery compartment and lastly the film release button. It has a shutter speed rage of 1/500 to 2 seconds, an aperture range from f/3.5 to F/22 and it features a 35mm D.zuiko lens with four elements in four groups (which is very sharp). The ISO ranges from 25 to 800 which goes up in 1/3 stops. The film winding is done by a wheel on the upper right hand side of the camera. It has a centre weighted meter, which when meters for under 1/30th on the shutter speed it will show a green light in the viewfinder. As for power it takes two s76 cells. And lastly the focusing, focusing is done by zone focusing, there are three different zone to pick from on the right hand side of the camera via a lever. The first zone is 1.2-1.8m, second zone 1.2-6.3m and third zone 6.3-infinity. When the lens cover is shut the focus lever will move back to the centre focus zone.

Street Photography
Is it good for street photography? In my opinion i think it is a good camera for street photography, it's small, even with the flash attached it fits in my pocket, light, rather inconspicuous which is aided by its quiet shutter (which is a mere whisper to the likes of one of my slr's) and no auto moving parts such as focus and winding. Zone focusing, when you're shooting street the best way to focus or to not is using zone focusing and although it doesn't allow you to free select aperture or see what it is set too you can just estimate the focus zone which using a technique like Mijonju's suggested use of your body parts and knowing there measurements can make zone focusing even easier. Also using a higher ISO might narrow down the aperture which will give you a greater depth of field so you don't have to be as accurate with focusing and if your film is good for pushing you might even want to try making the ISO setting on the camera higher which i have done myself, i was shooting a roll of Fuji neopan 400 but pushed it 2/3 of a stop for most of the roll which came out fine but some photos were underexposed somewhat in some situations but not bad at all.

In conclusion if you are looking for a quite cheap point and shoot which is small and can be taken almost anywhere but also packs a punch then i would definitely add this one to your list of options.

Some of the shots from that roll of neopan in the XA2