Small is beautiful

In the late 1970s, Olympus launched the XA range of 35mm ultra-compacts, followed later by the mju family. John Gilbey looks at what they still have to offer

- John Gilbey

To the photographer of the 1970s, the Olympus camera brand was almost synonymous with miniaturisation. The OM1 single lens reflex, introduced in 1973, had shrunk the size of a standard 35mm SLR by about a quarter leaving other brands racing to catch up. Rangefinder cameras such as the Olympus 35RC were gaining a strong following among travel and adventure photographers for the same reason.

Despite, or perhaps because of, these developments there remained an almost untapped market for even smaller cameras. Many aspiring photographers who had started with something like a Kodak Instamatic 126 camera were looking to graduate to a more versatile and capable alternative. To satisfy this need, Olympus developed an interesting series of ultra-compact 35mm models based on a novel clamshell design, which could slide into a pocket and become truly ‘go anywhere’ cameras.

The XA series

In 1979 the original Olympus XA was launched, and it was immediately obvious that this was something rather special. Despite its compact format – Olympus called it a ‘capsule camera’ – it was a fully-featured 35mm rangefinder camera with aperture-priority automatic exposure and a number of other offerings which made people sit up and take notice.

Olympus used plastic materials in the XA to a much greater extent than in previous designs, utilising the flexibility in design and manufacture which this offered. The sliding clamshell panel which protects the lens when not in use is the most obvious manifestation of this, and it gives the XA its characteristic look. In other areas, precision machined metals are still present, especially where this offers the opportunity for reducing the size or thickness of components. The camera back, pressed from thin but rigid metal, is a case in point.