page_title: Zuiko
section_title: XA capsule cameras
hierarchical_section_title: Zuiko / Fixed-lens cameras / XA capsule cameras
caption_attribution_description: Olympus 35 RC vs. XA size
context_page_description: Zuiko is a brand of optical lenses made by Olympus Corporation that was used up to and into the Four Thirds system era. The name Zuiko means 'Light of the Gods', using a character from the Mizuho Optic Research Laboratory, where the lens was developed, and a character from Takachiho Corporation, which would eventually become the Olympus Corporation.
  With the introduction of the Micro Four Thirds system in 2008, new lenses for that system started to be branded as M.Zuiko Digital.
context_section_description: The 35 xx models were replaced in 1979 by the Olympus XA, which was comparable to the 35 RC and RD in function, but markedly smaller with a sliding lens cover. Shortly after the OM-2 was launched in 1975, Maitani was asked to plan a new compact camera in response to a recent decline in Olympus's market share; at the time, the market share for Olympus 35mm compact cameras had decreased from 37% to 35%. He formed a team of 10 development engineers and gave them a year to independently conceive a new compact camera; the Konica C35 AF, which was the world's first autofocus camera, had just been released and all of the engineers were enthusiastic about designing a competitor. Maitani rejected that idea ("I told them that if they liked [the Konica C35] I'd buy them one each. That would only cost about 200,000 yen, compared with the hundreds of millions of yen needed for developing a new model.") and still seeing unsatisfactory results from the team, Maitani began to design a new compact camera himself, prioritizing size so that it could be carried everywhere. Based on the dimensions of the 35mm film cassette, he targeted a final camera size of 105 mm × 65 mm × 30 mm (4.1 in × 2.6 in × 1.2 in) (W×H×D), one that would also not require a case or a lens cap that could be lost. The resulting XA would go on to be the first camera to win the Good Design Award.
  The four successive numbered models in the XA series (XA1, XA2, XA3, XA4) largely used the same black plastic capless/capsule body design with slower lenses that were zone focused, with the exception of the fixed-focus XA1, which was similar in concept to the Pen EES and Trip 35. The XA4 was able to focus significantly closer and had a wider angle of view than the other cameras in the XA series.
caption: Olympus bracketing the 1970s: 35 RC (1970) and XA (1979)
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