We used the kit lenses at their widest and longest focal lengths with the apertures wide open. The crops are taken from the upper left corner of the chart and presented here at 100%.

Like the other kits tested here, the E-400 and 14-42mm lens exhibit coloured fringing at wide angle, but very little when zoomed-in to telephoto.

To measure and compare the Olympus E-400’s macro performance we photographed a custom chart using it and a number of rival models with their kit lenses.

Each camera was positioned at a distance and set to a focal length which delivered the maximum possible reproduction.

The dark lines are 10mm apart and the result is not cropped. Smaller areas are preferred in this test. The image left was taken with the Olympus E-400 using the Zuiko Digital 14-42mm kit lens.

Like most DSLR lenses, the greatest macro reproduction was achieved with the lens zoomed-in to telephoto. There the Olympus E-400 and Zuiko Digital 14-42mm captured an area measuring 68x50mm.

This is fractionally bettered by the Canon kit lens, but is comfortably superior to both the Leica 14-50mm and the Zuiko Digital 14-45mm lenses.