Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Olympus XA4

Olympus · Fixed lens · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1985

Also known as: Olympus XA-4 · Olympus XA4 Macro · オリンパスXA4

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
XA4 Macro (black) 35mm compact 1985 — No figure published
  1. No production figure has ever been published, and this is the model where the absence does the most damage. The XA4's price on the used market rests entirely on its being scarce, and there is no published number behind the scarcity — only a short run whose end date three sources give three different ways.
  2. The measuring strap is the XA4's most-copied party trick and the sources do not quite agree on its marks. Patrick Kuhl at 35mmc and the Film Photography Project both give 1 foot and 1.7 feet. ImagingPixel writes "0.3 meters (12 inches) or 0.7 meters (1.7 feet)", whose metric and imperial figures do not match each other: 1.7 feet is about 0.52 m, not 0.7 m. Take the imperial pair as the reliable one, and about half a metre as the second mark.
  3. The lens is the outlier of the line in two directions at once. Charlotte Davis calls it pin-sharp and capable of exceedingly detailed images, and notes in the same review that it vignettes and distorts at the edges when focused close — which is where a 28mm at 0.3 m is being asked to work hardest.
  4. DX coding without an override is the standing complaint. The camera reads the cassette and that is the end of it; Davis's workaround is tape over the code. The XA2 and the original XA, both older, let the film speed be set by hand.
  5. No launch price has been found for the XA4 in any market or currency in the sources consulted.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A 28mm f/3.5 Zuiko of five elements in five groups — the only lens in the XA series that is not a 35mm, and the reason the camera was made
  • Focuses to 0.3 m, against 0.85 m or 0.9 m on the original XA. The XA2 and XA3 have no stated minimum at all — English Wikipedia's table gives them as three-position zone focus and nothing more, and the three published readings of where those zones sit disagree
  • The supplied wrist strap is a measuring device: extended, it sets the camera-to-subject distance at the two close marks, which Patrick Kuhl and the Film Photography Project both give as 1 foot and 1.7 feet
  • Closing the clamshell resets the focus scale to 3 m (10 ft), and it stays there when the cover is opened again
  • DX film coding, ISO 25 to 1600, with no manual override — taping over the cassette's code is the only way to push or pull
  • A green LED at the lower right of the finder lights at 1/30 or slower; a zig-zag flash arrow shows at the left when a flash is switched on
  • The self-timer/battery-check/backlight lever lives on the front edge of the baseplate and doubles as a prop when the camera stands on a table

XA4 Macro (black):

  • MACRO on the front of the body, and a Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 behind the barrier — no other XA carries either
  • A graduated distance scale on the front panel running from 0.3 m, in place of the three-click head/heads/mountain lever of the XA2 and XA3
  • 38.5 mm deep: the thinnest of the series, and an elongated front bulge rather than the XA's oval

Serial-range notes

the whole run
No published serial decoder exists for any XA. Olympus has released no serial table for the series and none of the sources here proposes one, so an XA4 cannot be dated from its number — which matters more on this model than on the others, because the length of its production run is itself disputed.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Direct-vision bright-line finder with parallax marks, no rangefinder patch; green slow-speed LED at lower right and a flash-ready arrow at the left of the frame · no rangefinder image
Shutter
leaf, released by an electro-sensitive touch pad rather than a travelling button · 2s – 1/750, programmed: ImagingPixel gives the range as 2s at f/3.5 to 1/750 at f/14 · self-timer
Film advance
thumbwheel on the back
Back
hinged, non-interchangeable
Meter
CdS cell mounted above the lens on the barrel ring, programmed automatic exposure only. Film speed is read from the DX code, ISO 25 to 1600, and cannot be set by hand. A baseplate lever gives +1.5 EV backlight compensation and shares its travel with the self-timer and the battery check. Two LR44 or SR44 cells.
Designed by
Maitani Yoshihisa (米谷美久) — Designed the XA series; English Wikipedia credits him with the line as a whole and no source consulted names a designer for the XA4 in particular
Weight
230 g
Dimensions
102 × 64.5 × 38.5 mm
Country
Japan
Accessories
A1L flash — the small unit English Wikipedia identifies as made for the XA4 · A11 and A16 flash units, shared with the rest of the line · Flash adaptor for close-up work · The measuring wrist strap supplied with the camera

Figures we worked out rather than found: 28mm against the 35mm fitted to all four other XAs, and 0.3 m against 0.85–0.9 m on the XA — the two gaps are this project's arithmetic on published figures, and together they are the argument for treating the XA4 as a family rather than an XA2 trim. No comparable gap can be computed against the XA2, because no source publishes a minimum focus distance for it: the zone lever's three settings are given three different ways, and two of the three describe depth of field rather than where the lens is focused

Where sources disagree

Last
  • 1985, with no second year (English Wikipedia's XA-series specification table, which also ends the whole line in 1985)
  • 1985–86 (Film Photography Project, describing a manufacture range of one year)
  • Debut in 1985, exit about a year later (Oly35mm, quoted by ImagingPixel)
  • Manufactured for just one year (Charlotte Davis, Casual Photophile, without naming which)

Better supported: Unresolved

Everyone agrees the run was about a year; nobody agrees on where it ended, and the disagreement is not cosmetic, because Wikipedia's table closes the XA line entirely in 1985 while two other sources have XA4 production continuing into 1986. This entry therefore records a first year and leaves the last blank rather than pick one.

Focus scale, number of positions
  • A seven-zone distance scale from 0.3 m to infinity (ImagingPixel)
  • A more detailed distance scale than the XA2 and XA3 three-position lever, with no count given (Classic Cameras Australia)
  • Described only as scale focusing from 0.3 m to infinity, with no positions counted (English Wikipedia; Casual Photophile)

Better supported: ImagingPixel, as the only source that counts

This is the question a buyer holding an XA4 actually has — whether the lever clicks into detents or slides freely — and exactly one published source answers it. The rest describe the scale by contrast with the XA2's three positions and leave the number alone.

Measuring strap, second mark
  • 1.7 feet, about 0.52 m (Patrick Kuhl at 35mmc; Film Photography Project)
  • 0.7 metres, given as 1.7 feet in the same sentence (ImagingPixel)

Better supported: 1.7 feet

Not a genuine disagreement so much as an internal contradiction in one source: 1.7 feet and 0.7 m are not the same distance, and two independent sources give only the imperial figure. Recorded because a strap used as a ruler is worth getting right.

What reviewers say

History

The XA4 is the only camera in the XA series whose lens is not a 35mm. That single change carries everything else about it. A Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 in five elements and five groups replaces the six-element f/2.8 of the original and the four-element f/3.5 of the XA2 and XA3, the minimum focusing distance falls from around a metre to 0.3 m, and the body ends up the thinnest of the five at 38.5 mm — a wide-angle close-focusing camera inside the shell Maitani built for a pocketable rangefinder.

Because it is a scale-focus camera being asked to work at 30 centimetres, Olympus supplied a ruler. The wrist strap that comes with it is marked, and stretched out from the body it sets the two close distances — 1 foot and 1.7 feet on Patrick Kuhl’s account and the Film Photography Project’s, which is the pair to trust; ImagingPixel prints “0.7 meters (1.7 feet)” in one breath, and those are not the same distance. The other thing worth knowing before the first roll is that sliding the barrier shut returns the scale to 3 metres and leaves it there when the camera is opened again, so a photographer who forgets gets a frame focused at ten feet whatever the subject was.

What actually changed across the run is, as far as anything published goes, nothing. There is one finish, no documented trims, no market variants, and no serial decoder for any XA. The disagreement on this page is not about versions but about duration: English Wikipedia’s table gives 1985 and closes the whole series there, the Film Photography Project writes 1985–86, and the note ImagingPixel quotes from Oly35mm has the camera exit about a year after its debut. This entry records a first year and leaves the last one empty, because choosing between them would be inventing the answer.

The absence that matters most is the production figure, and it is total. Olympus has published no unit count for the XA4 or for any of its siblings; the corporate chronology records the original XA’s launch in May 1979 as the world’s first barrier-type compact and never returns to the line. The XA4 is priced by collectors on the premise that it is the rare one, and that premise rests on a short production run and on how few turn up, not on a number anyone has printed. A page that supplied one would be doing the reader a disservice dressed as a favour.

What can be settled from a photograph of the camera is the identification. MACRO is written on the front. The lens says 28mm. The distance scale is graduated rather than a three-position lever with pictures on it. The front bulge is elongated where the original XA’s is a flattened oval, and the body is a millimetre and a half shallower than an XA2. That is enough, and for this camera it is most of what is knowable.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Example photos

Sample photo taken with the Olympus XA4
Olympus XA4 Macro — John Nuttall from Hampshire, United Kingdom, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Olympus XA4
Grüner See — shot on an Olympus XA4 (hrdinka) — hrdinka, via Flickr (Openverse) (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Olympus XA4? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $350 across 15 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-06 (middle half $280–$400). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

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Listings updated 2026-09-05. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Olympus XA1

Sources (8)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.