Here are a couple of shots that show the very different philosophies between the Stylus and XA2. These are all shot with VS. Of course, the scans can't capture anything close to the detail and quality of the original slides. The scanner had an especially hard time dealing with the contrast and saturation produced by the XA2 (a common short-coming of scanning). I tried to bring them up as close as possible to the appearance of the original slides. But no electronic medium can capture the razor sharpness of the XA2 photos. The Stylus photos, with their "flatter" look, scanned much easier and more accurately. These came out very close to the original slides with little to no postprocessing.
In the first two samples below, the left hand shot is from the XA2, the right hand shot is from the Stylus. Given the Stylus' preference for large apertures and fast shutter speeds, the barn was probably shot at f4. This shows clearly in the reduced DOF (foreground plants are out of focus) and the overall softness of the shot. The Stylus was full open for the mountain path (I had to turn off the flash!), as the out of focus grass in the foreground and softness at infinity show. The XA2 was probably at f8 for both shots, and everything is in razor sharp focus. These also show that the Stylus exposes by about 1/3 stop over the XA2 (Interestingly enough, my AX1 exposes about half way between the Stylus and XA2).
On the other hand, the Stylus' setup produces remarkably good low light images, as shown in the last shot. In low light or heavy overcast (or both), the XA's have a hard time capturing the flatness of the light, making the images too dark with artificial contrast. Although some of these XA photos have a striking appearence with a slide viewer, the scanner is completely unable to do them justice :-(. One option would be to set the ASA 1/3 stop slower when using the XA in low light.
