I was given the Pen EE as a 21st birthday present by the same aunt who gave me the Kodak Brownie Starflex fourteen years earlier. I shot mostly slides at that time and while there was a tendency for the camera to under expose in other than perfect conditions it still was a very usable camera. Unfortunately a Russian guard hit the camera very hard with a metal detector at Moscow airport in 1973. Needless to say the auto exposure system and the shutter never worked properly after that
This Olympus semi automatic was introduced about the same time as the Minox 35. I was interested in buying the Minox but as I recall the one feature that separated them was that the Minox had no rangefinder and was a tiny bit smaller. On the down side the XA came with a small (perhaps the smallest ever) electronic flash that for us proved quite unreliable. The camera on the other hand was nothing short of brilliant. The aperture priority exposure system never failed to be accurate and the back light compensation feature added to the ability of the camera to be used under the most difficult of lighting conditions and still perform well.
