Troublesome Twos
Sometimes you wonder why you bother. You fix one problem, but then get so close to fixing another, but not quite close enough.
Hands up, I’m definitely a fan of Olympus cameras, analog and digital. The 35mm OM series were brilliant in their day and make an excellent choice for those wanting to try film photography now. Whilst the mirrorless Micro 4/3 series broke new ground that others followed.
But if you want something more pocketable than a 35mm SLR? There are plenty of options in the Olympus stable to please most people.
Aside from the famous Trip 35 and the Mju series which now command (to me) ridiculous prices, as an earlier page details (Pocketable Perfection) the XA series was another winner for Olympus.
Over the years, all the XA series bar the XA1 have passed my way, and the other week I decided to see what I could do with a couple of XA2 that were going cheap, because they were “Spares or Repair”. The thought being, I might be able to make one decent one out of the pair. Seems I was partly right.
From here on, we’re ignoring the XA1. It may look similar, but it’s a different beast underneath.
Despite their diminutive size, the XA’s are relatively easy to take apart, to a point. You’ll also find plenty of useful help online, especially the Analog Camera Repair channel on YouTube, which offers a series of good videos on this subject and more besides.
A brief look over the pair of XA2 I’d acquired found them both needing the usual light seal treatment. In terms of what was faulty, neither wanted to fire their shutter on a regular basis, which can be a number of things, including the shutter button itself. But the pair worryingly also exhibited the same trait, which ruled that out: Both would trigger the self timer when selected, but not the shutter once the time had run down. Hence I’d expect the shutter button itself to be working.
After trying a few things, I noticed another problem I’d not spotted at first on one of the bodies; the button that releases the film advance mechanism when you want to wind a completed roll back into the camera had done a runner! It’s a deep strip down to replace that particular part and simply not worth the effort, even if you can find just that component.
Before I started to delve deeper into the workings, one problem I had noticed made life a little easier later on. The viewfinder on the XA2 is, shall we say minimalist, just a framing outline, a green low light warning LED in the bottom right hand corner and a flash ready indicator.
In trying to get either to fire the shutter, the XA2 body that looked like it had had a lot more use than the other, the low light LED operated correctly. The LED on the body in better condition simply stayed on, unless the flash was enabled. Logical deduction would suggest the light sensor on this one was faulty.
You’ve doubtless correctly guessed what the end results of all this fiddling about would be? You’d only be partly right. I now have an XA2 that looks really good. Luckily the body which still has the film release button, is also the one with a working light sensor, so it gained all the good body parts, especially the unmarked film door. It also has new light seals, because for a start, it’s much easier doing this with the film door detached.
Sadly, it still doesn’t behave when you press the shutter button, at least, not every time. So I’m still searching for a solution. I’m going to have another attempt at cleaning the faces of two solenoids which activate the shutter, one of which being a touch difficult to get at.
Experience says it could also be a failing capacitor, time does nothing for their reliability, though there’s nothing obvious to show it in this case. A bulge at one or both ends of the offending component is usually a sign, though in some more dramatic instances, I have seen bits of capacitor innards scattered inside faulty kit, but not a camera I hasten to add.
I have had a partial win with this pair of compacts though. One came complete with the matching A11 flash unit, but din’t work at all. But, I already had one of these which did work, but the little charged indicator that pops up didn’t illuminate. NB. Past tense!
Seeing as the flash simply didn’t work at all on the one that arrived with the XA2, I carefully disassembled that and “borrowed” the charged indictor and swapped it with the one on working flash unit. Little victories.
Should I finally manage to cure the reluctant XA2, I’ll update the page.