XA Lens Quality?

XA Lens Quality?

  • it's always sharp!

    Votes: 96 30.8%

  • by f4

    Votes: 47 15.1%

  • by f5.6

    Votes: 93 29.8%

  • by f8

    Votes: 41 13.1%

  • by f11

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • it never really gets that sharp

    Votes: 35 11.2%
  • Total voters
    312
raid said:
The XA is not meant to be used wide open all the time.
I use it at 5.6-11 most of the time.
If needed, I get nice looking images back at 2.8.
Click to expand...

Yes. What Raid said. It's a good lens when used within its limits. Bought mine new when they came out around 1979, but now it suffers from a faded rangefinder spot and an intermittent shutter release. On the other hand, I have a lot of good pictures and didn't have to lug an SLR along to get them.
 
I had one for years, my first pocketable camera. Now I use a Canon S95, my second pocketable camera. The XA served me well, and I suspect the S95 will too.
 
I had an XA2 for quite a while and it was a very nice performer.

A couple of years ago, I bought an XA. The images were OK but not as nice as those from the XA2. After a few months of use, it suffered a terminal fault with the focussing mechanism. Luckily, I'd bought it from a London dealer and they refunded the purchase price. Now that's what I call service!

It could be that the reason for the XA's poor output was that the focus mechanism was already out of kilter.
 
I had an XA years ago when shooting almost exclusively slides, and I got rid of it because I found vignetting to be a big problem. Just negs now, so I found a decent one on ebay, so I'll see how it does.

Cheers,
Dez
 
For a camera barely larger than three rolls of film they are a design masterpiece. My XAs are great for their time and my XA4 with it's 28mm f4 that has a 30cm macro mode is even better.
 
I love my XA. Sharp enough for me.

6935351618_31c509bb03_c.jpg
[/url]18220033.jpg by KentWebb, on Flickr[/IMG]

XA; Kodak BW400CN; NCPS Process and scan
 
Sejanus.Aelianus said:
I had an XA2 for quite a while and it was a very nice performer.

A couple of years ago, I bought an XA. The images were OK but not as nice as those from the XA2. After a few months of use, it suffered a terminal fault with the focussing mechanism. Luckily, I'd bought it from a London dealer and they refunded the purchase price. Now that's what I call service!

It could be that the reason for the XA's poor output was that the focus mechanism was already out of kilter.
Click to expand...

Same for me, the XA is fine, but until now I like the XA2's lens better. But I'll need to shoot some more films to make a final decision.

Definitely better at 5.6 as wide open though
 
I've been using it for 20+ years and I think the lens on my sample was very sharp.

Rio de Janeiro, 2004, Kodak cheapo 200 ASA colour negative converted to BW after scanning with Coolscan 4000
Scan-151018-0004_PC (Large) by S A, su Flickr

100% center crop from 24 Mpx file
Scan-151018-0004_PP by S A, su Flickr
Sharp enough? 😎

Unfortunately, the electronics stopped working a few years ago.
I'm going to buy another one sooner or later...
 
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