Olympus XA on top of Leica iii

Olympus XA and other Compacts – Rediscovering Old Flames – By Alan Reich

I currently live in London UK, but some years ago I lived in the Middle East working as a journalist. I have a life long habit of street photography and have had many iterations of a favourite every day camera.

I only started taking photos as a student in university but the hobby/obsession and my camera collection has grown since then. My first camera was a Ricoh 500G. It gave me good practice with rangefinder focussing, however I did not know much about composition or even how to get the best out of the lens (which I later realised wasn’t really that sharp).