Entries in 35mm film camera (3)
Thrift Store Find: Lomo Smena 35
Olympus XA4
The Olympus XA4 is the wide angle version of the Olympus XA compact 35mm film cameras.It sports a 28mm lens vs the 35mm lens of the other XA cameras. I picked this one up on eBay. it had a stiff sliding cover, but a partial disassembly and cleaning improved it. It still isn't as smooth as my XA, but much better than it had been. I'm shooting my first roll of Tri-X through it now. I'm doing some comparison shots with my XA, so we'll be able to see the difference in each camera's field of view.
The XA4 does not have a rangefinder like the XA, but uses a zone focus system with 7 settings (1 ft, 1.7ft, 2.3ft, 3.3 ft, 5ft, 10ft, infinity) The wide angle lens allows a much closer focus distance, 1 ft, and the camera strap serves as an aid to focus at 1 ft or 1.7 ft. It does not have the manual aperture settings of the XA. The XA aperture control on the left of the lens is replaced with the focus control on the XA4.