Fatherhood Friday 33: Testing Olympus XA3

So I bought a new camera off TradeMe (NZ’s equivalent of Ebay) last week and it turned up on Monday. It is an Olympus XA3, which is a 35mm fixed 30mm lens and fully automatic but really small and super sharp, that was bought out around 1985.  It was described as non-working so it only cost $30NZ and the research  did before I bought it seemed to suggest that it was probably a contact problem which would be easy to fix.

It arrived in the middle of the Snow storm on Monday and I was surprised when I put new batteries in it worked fine 🙂

This is the kind of small camera that means you can really always have a camera on you and still shoot film… Sometimes the Rollei is just a bit big to always carry around when you also have a 2-year-old with you.

These are some shots, mostly of kids due to the fact we were pretty much housebound due to the Snow and copious amounts of rain we have had all week, from the first roll I put through it.

They are quite contrasty mostly since I was using 400 ISO Film pushed to 1600 and then developed at 1/9 dilution rather than the 1/19 dilution I would usually use (I was in a bit of a rush to Develop).

All in all I quite like them. I currently have a roll of 800 ISO colour negative film loaded but unless it is really cool I think I will go back to 400 pushed to 1600.

Olympus XA3 Camera, Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO Film pushed to 1600 and developed with Ilford LC29 at 1/9 Dilution, CanoScan 9000F Scanner.