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

Zoomed-in to telephoto, the Zuiko Digital 14-42mm is again slightly soft with the aperture wide open, but again it’s comparable to the other kit lenses on test. Overall, it’s a good result considering the new lens is significantly smaller and lighter than the E-500’s 14-45mm kit lens.

Note: crop details which appear smaller here are due to them being captured with lower resolution cameras and / or a lens which couldn’t focus as close to the chart. In each case though, the crop still represents the extreme left corner of each camera’s frame. The Canon 400D / XTi shows a different part of the chart because it takes wider 3:2 aspect images, but these still represent the extreme left corner.