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RIP My Olympus XA
I found this beauty about 20 years ago at a yard sale with the A16 flash for a whopping $10. Since then it's photographed children, friends, family, a couple of weddings, many vacations and all sorts of really great pictures of bicycles in Italy -- producing images that were Leica quality at least, no kidding. It was my street shooter of choice, tiny, accurate, nobody cared about it.
Hundreds of rolls of film, no exaggeration.
But plastic gears do not a Leica make -- or whatever sort of gears it has, and last week it finally died, getting increasingly hard to wind and finally refusing to fire, but giving excellent exposures right up to the end.
Replacing it with a thrift-store find, another XA of course, but I gotta tell ya, the little guy took a beating and kept on ticking.
this is one of the last shots it took:
Last edited by summicron1; 07-18-2012 at 08:29 PM. Click to view previous post history.
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That's a great last photo.She went out on a high note.The king is dead,long live the king.
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Your Olympus certainly gave you good service. And yes a lovely final photo.
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Very sorry to hear! I had a broken XA that I fixed using parts from a cheaper to buy parts XA2 off the bay....
Sometimes these XAs just need a cog transplant....
You ready to toss her?
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Mine hardly works any more, but if I jiggle the winding knob it will fire.
Jon
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All the 35 spy camera just the best to have. I'm sad one more gone.
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 Originally Posted by zsas
Very sorry to hear! I had a broken XA that I fixed using parts from a cheaper to buy parts XA2 off the bay....
Sometimes these XAs just need a cog transplant....
You ready to toss her?
nope. it gets a place of honor on the shelf. I already have a replacement, and XA2s seem to show up in the local thrift store on a regular basis.
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Originally Posted by Jon Shiu
Mine hardly works any more, but if I jiggle the winding knob it will fire.
Jon
i tried that, but no-go. From how hard it was getting to wind I suspect it is either terminally gummed up or just worn out. Someone else suggested a cog replacement, and I suppose I could cannibalize an XA2 to fix it, but I have a replacement already that looks nearly mint and just did a test roll spot-on, so that's the direction I'll take.
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shot with the replacement. Not bad
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If your getting shots like that in the new rig, you shouldn't look back! Glad you kept the retired XA and didn't toss it too; as if the electric is still kicking, re-gearing isn't too hard if you find one while thrifting, to get new organs from (cogs, clutch) and a 1oz tube of Molykote to lube the gears....
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