XA is a great camera for it's size... I adore mine, no doubt... It has its very own strengths... For example, although not by night, it allowed me to do a shot that was almost impossible to do, and a very important one to my heart these days...
On February I visited my mother for a couple of weeks (she lives far away) and I went out with her one morning to help her look for furniture for one of my sisters' new house that my mother's helping to buy, so she was especially happy that sunny morning... When we got there, it was a bit early: the store was about to open, in ten minutes, as we read on the door from inside the car when we parked in front of the store. Then with a big smile, glad about being there with her son and about to get things for her youngest daughter, she told me she felt completely happy, and I told her I felt just the same, and then I said OK, let's walk a few minutes under the sun... It was a store surrounded by trees and parks, with no one there by 8:50 AM...
Then she opened the car door, went out, and stood under the sun, closed her eyes, and with a calmed, very gentle smile, raised her arms opened, and for a moment kept them with the palms of her hands up, facing the sun... I remembered instantly the only other time I saw her do it: we were, many years before, in Paris one early morning, waiting for a cab to go to the airport... That day I had a Nikon with me hanging from my shoulder, and when I came out of the hotel with our luggage a few steps behind her, I found her doing it... And it took me then a few seconds to set exposure and focus when I tried to get close (with a 20mm) to photograph her in that position... I failed, it all happened in a few seconds, and I felt very sad, but when she saw and heard me shooting in front of her, I just smiled, and did not let her know I was sad... I had time to shoot once, but she was just starting to take her arms down and turning back to face the hotel... I asked her -a bit later- what she was doing, and she told me “I was receiving through the sun the next gifts God is sending me soon for my children...”
I had never seen her do it in my life, and I didn't know she used to do it... And she never taught me to do it either... Well, back to the recent day, when I saw her there doing it again, time froze... I hurried up, ran to her from the other side of the car, took my XA out of my pants pocket, opened it while taking it up, and shot just in front of her with the sun behind me, all in two seconds... She didn't hear the shutter... She was so concentrated, so away... I knew I had got her, so I stayed there, quiet, took the camera down without advancing film, and without closing the camera, and put it inside my pocket again: she didn't ever notice me this time, and I enjoyed looking at her for another few seconds... Then she opened her eyes and I embraced her, and we both smiled...
The camera was prefocused at 8 feet and f/8 and loaded with Tri-X, and the shot is perfect... I printed it with deep emotion, and now it's the only photograph in my bedroom...
My XA is priceless.
Cheers,
Juan
