I think this is the perfect small rangefinder camera. Quite possibly the perfect small camera.
I’ve actually had mine from new. I originally owned its smaller brother, the XA2. This got a bit of a soaking in salt water which caused the lens focusing thread to seize. I freed it but the shutter release was also unreliable, so an upgrade it was. The XA became my perfect take-anywhere, use-anywhere camera.
It is has aperture-priority automatic exposure. The aperture scale runs down the front of the camera with a lever to select. F5.6 is marked in orange, as is the 3m distance on the lens’ focus scale. These are the hyperfocal settings that turn the camera into a focus-free point and shoot. The tip of the focusing lever is accessible even when the camera cover is closed. I marked mine with some paint to show the 3m position, so I can check and set the lens to the correct distance even before the cover is opened. With the distance set and the aperture at 5.6 or smaller, it’s immediately ready to shoot.
The lens is sharp, as you would expect of an Olympus. The design of the 35mm F2.8 lens in the XA is very clever – it’s a wide-angle telephoto with internal focusing. What this means is that the camera can be tiny as the lens is very close to the film and doesn’t need to be extended to use. For such a short rangefinder base it’s actually easy to focus. And mine has never gone out of alignment, unlike every every other rangefinder I have used. It also focuses down to under a meter, so beats most other rangefinders.
The bokeh hunters will be dismayed though – the aperture is formed of two blades producing a square hole. All those people who track down lenses with the highest possible number of aperture blades producing perfectly circular openings will be horrified to learn the the Olympus just works: it delivers nice pictures. Maybe not for the people who are more interested in the blur than the subject, but it does very well what it was designed to do.
The autoexposure will give you shutter speeds from 1/500 down to 10 seconds, so it can keep taking pictures in the dark. Prop it on a table or wall, press the button and wait.
The shutter release is the divisive feature. It’s a flat panel with an electronic rather than mechanical trigger. It can also be hair-trigger sensitive. But the shutter release is very quiet, so this camera is super discrete. I used it during a concert recital in a medieval church and nobody noticed. I’m told that the release button can be unreliable on these cameras as they age though. If you are buying one, this would be the thing to check.
There is a little flashgun that screws to the side. It’s automatic, but has settings for 100 and 400 ISO. I found what looks like a hack with it. If you turn it on and let it charge, then switch it off and immediately take the picture, it acts as a fill-in flash. It may not be a clever trick at all, but it seems to work.
Other than that, I rate this little camera very highly. Think of it as a Leica with a built-in light meter and a decent 35mm lens, but easier to load, carry and use. My only wish was that Olympus had made a version with an 80mm lens. Then I could put the XA in one pocket, the ‘long XA’ in the other and skip around in weightless bliss.
Fup Duck Photography 
Now I want to shoot mine!
I sold my XA2 this year — I like the XA just a little bit more, and I didn’t need to keep both cameras.