Olympus XA: Flash, Lasers, Light Trails
Using film as a beginner means there is no knowing what your photos are going to come out like, or whether they’ll come out at all. Sometimes they turn out exactly as expected, others are blurry and boring, and sometimes the camera gives you a gift.
This is what I picked up when I brought my pocket-able Olympus XA to a festival this summer. I thought my camera or flash were broken, or both. Whatever it was, these light trails captured the colourful motion of being in a crowd and not quite knowing where the **** you are, but being happy about it because your senses are full of lasers and smiles.
Although these poorly taken photographs actually turned out pretty cool, I wanted to know how to purposely do this again.
A11 Flash
The flash I am using on the Olympus XA is the A11, which (usually) comes with buying the camera, and attaches to the side. Taking flash photos with this set up is simple:
Attach the flash to the camera
Match the ISO rating of your film to the front ASA dial on the A11 (the terms ISO and ASA can be used interchangeably)
Flick the aperture up to ‘Flash’ setting and a little light box will pop up on the A11.
When this box has turned orange, you’re ready to go.
In ‘Flash’ mode, the Olympus XA automatically fixes shutter speed at 1/30s and aperture at f/4 for correct exposure. This is automatic and as the camera tells you, gives a max range of 2.8m using ISO 100 film, and 5.6m using ISO 400 film.
Magical machinery
Shutter Drag
Shutter drag is a technique that first uses flash to freeze capture motion (of your subject) but the shutter stays open a little longer to capture other lights in view. The technique (from googling) is to drop the shutter speed to around 1/15s and to move/drag the camera around after taking, so that background lights create a trail on the film.
In my case, I caught my friends with the flash and while the shutter was still open, moving lasers in the background created the awesome trails.
However, wasn’t the XA meant to fix the shutter speed and aperture for correct exposure? I think I got lucky, either the moving lights did all the work for me or I was just very unstable.
Creating light trails on the XA
This method is a work in progress, but through some research, the way to intentionally achieve this effect using the XA and A11 is by…
Setting the camera to ‘flash’ mode, then manually adjusting the aperture to another setting. Flicking the aperture dial away from ‘Flash’ will keep the flash operating, yet return the XA to its normal aperture-priority setting. This means the camera will set shutter speed for correct exposure depending on your chosen aperture. In low light, this means the shutter speed will be very low - allowing sufficient time for light trails to form on the film after the flash has fired and you drag the camera.
How to find out? onemoreroll