Olympus XA2 – Infrared Blackout Edition

Notice! This post is part of a series about shooting an Olympus XA2 with Infrared Flash. If this is the first page you are visiting on the subject of infrared blash, it may be beneficial to start with the summary post of the series.

Back Story

One night about a week ago, I found myself standing amongst several hundred small town residents who where well fed from a bottomless supply of Busch Light. The entire night I had one through repeating in my head.

“Why haven't I followed through with my plan of creating an infrared flash camera? This would be the perfect scenario for it.”

I got curious about the idea of creating an infrared flash camera about eighteen months ago after this tutorial about modifying a flash for infrared use. Back then I bought the appropriate filter and modified my large Vivitar 285 Flash to be infrared. While it was powerful, I felt that its size lacked the stealthiness I'd hoped to gain by shooting with an infrared flash. I never ended up completing that infrared flash project.

Enter the Olympus XA2.

In June. a friend of mine recently picked up two Olympus XA2s at an estate sale for $1.50 each. I gave him some beer, and he gave me one of the XA2s. It was now time to make a dedicate Infrared camera that would be hell bent on stealthiness.

The Conversion.

The first, and only required step was to cover up the flash with a piece of Lee 87 Infrared Gel
. With a pair of scissors and a few pieces of black duct tape it only took a few minutes to convert the camera. I hope no one needs instructions of any more details for this step.

The second thing I did make to add some additional invisibility to the XA2 was to get rid of the glowing orange pop-up button that indicates when the flash is ready to be fired.

This was accomplished via many layers of black tempera paint that I had around. I really expected it to scratch off the first time I pushed the button into the camera to shut off the flash, but to my surprise it has been holding out well during my stress tests.

Since that button does serve a useful purpose, I also left most of the back side unpainted so that the functionality wouldn't be destroyed.

After all the glowing parts were hidden, I noticed one last area that could be improved. There was a red circle and a white manufacturer's name right there on the front of the camera. With such an anti-stealth feature, I might as well have rigged up a blow horn to go off with the shutter. Taking my cue from Leica culture, I put tape over them as well to complete my cloak of invisibility.

The Future

The Olympus XA2 is converted, but as of writing this post it is all speculation and hope. I've only ran one roll of traditional black & white film through the XA2 ever, and haven't even developed that yet. I have some infrared film ordered which should be arriving next week. Once the film arrives I'll finally start to see how well this will actually work.