My Camera Histoire: Oly! Oly!

About the time I was getting my F3's fixed, I started looking at small cameras again and purchased an Olympus XA-2, just for fun. I wanted something small and unassuming that would take nice sharp photos. The XA-2 did a pretty good job. It was just as quiet as a Leica M3 to boot! The only down side was it was fully automatic and I really wanted a manual camera. It was a fun camera though so when an auto focus version of it came out, I couldn't resist. It was called the Olympus Stylus. Both are no large than a pack of cigarettes making them easy to carry. There was a manual version of the XA-2 as I recall but I never was able to track one down.

My camera collection remained this way up until 2006 when I made the jump to digital. Up to that point, I had also shot with 4x5 view cameras and a Hasselblad ELX with a Dicomed BigShot digital single shot back. We (the company I worked with in the 90's) were one of the first companies in the Washington DC area to have a single-shot digital camera. This camera produced an image that was about 20mp when the 35mm cameras were just starting to be designed.