Grubby little camera...

As any parents are wont to do, mine took photos of my brother and I when we were little. Trips to the beach, to grandparents' houses, holidays, sports days, the lot. I remember one camera being used throughout my childhood. It was black, a clamshell design, and there was a dent on the back cover. The dent was from when my parents went on holiday to Portugal, while my mum was pregnant with me - it got dropped by a swimming pool.

So this camera is now 27 years old. My parents stashed it away in a drawer, no longer wanting to bother with the hassle of getting film developed - my mum takes all her photos with her Android phone now. For a while I'd been thinking about it, but today I decided to dig it out. It was none other than the (rather rare) Olympus XA4, a wide-angle rangefinder. I was over the moon - I was expecting the much commoner XA1 or 2.




It really needs a clean, as it has accumulated the kind of unspecified grub only found at the bottom of kitchen drawers. But after two new batteries, the shutter seems to work fine on all speeds. I can't wait to put a film in it and get using it!