The arrival of the Micro Four Thirds format has given the digital camera market a much-needed shake-up. The Olympus E-P1 and Panasonic GF1 use this format to provide digital SLR quality in a compact body, a combination that photographers have been awaiting eagerly.

But while these cameras might have a size advantage, they’re not cheap. In fact both cost more than a regular entry-level digital SLR, so they’ve got to provide good optical performance if they’re going to justify their price.

And to find out, we’re testing the Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42mm f3.5-5.6. This is the kit lens usually supplied with the E-P1 and now the new E-P2 camera, but it’s also available separately. If you’re considering investing in either camera, or this lens on its own, you’ll want to know just how it compares with D-SLR lenses.

The answer comes in two parts! This is because this lens’s physical construction is a little out of the ordinary. We’ll come to the optical quality shortly, but we do need to explain its unusual ‘parking’ mechanism.

Most of the pictures of this lens which you’ll see (including the ones with this review) show the lens ‘parked’. Olympus claims that it has only 65 percent of the volume of the 14-42mm kit lens it sells with its E-series SLRs, but that’s when the lens is locked in this position. To use it, you have to turn the zoom barrel to the left to release the lens, which then extends in two sections. When it’s extended, this lens looks at least as long as a D-SLR’s kit lens, and the extra complexity of the ‘parking’ mechanism makes it feel more complicated internally too.

It’s easy to see why Olympus did this. It means it can show off a super-compact kit lens to go with its compact Micro Four Thirds body. But it does feel a bit of a swizz since you can’t use the camera with the lens collapsed, and you’ve got the extra faff on unlocking and locking it each time you want to use the camera or put it back in your bag.

That’s not all. The front section of the lens has a bit of a wobble to it when it’s extended, and the front element rotates as the lens focusses. This means it’s not much good for filters, since many of these (polarisers and graduated filters especially) need to be rotated carefully to achieve their effect. When the front element rotates, so does the filter, so you’re constantly having to reposition the filter for each tiny focus adjustment made by the lens.

This lens’s physical construction is a bit disappointing, then, but optically it’s a completely different story. The Micro Four Thirds format uses sensors slightly smaller than a conventional SLR’s and in the past the resolution of Four Thirds cameras has lagged just that little bit behind.

But not here. This lens didn’t just match the kind of figures we expect to see from APS-C SLRs, it exceeded them. The best resolution was at the shortest focal lengths, where the Olympus hit resolutions of 2000 line widths/picture height. The resolution proved slighly lower in the middle of the focal range, peaking at around 1800 line widths/picture height, but that’s still very high. At maximum focal length this lens dropped to around 1500-1600 line widths/picture height. Even this, though, is very good for a kit lens at its maximum focal length.

Clearly Olympus and Panasonic have found something extra in the Four Thirds format, their lenses or the way the sensor data is processed, because the Panasonic GF1 and 20mm pancake lens tested last month delivered unexpectedly high resolution figures too.

It’s not just the peak resolutions which are impressive here. The edge definition is close behind at all but the longest focal lengths, and this is one of the characteristics that separates a good lens from a poor one.

The distortion levels are extremely low, too. There’s some barrel distortion at the wideangle end of the zoom range, but less than we’re used to seeing from kit lenses. As a rule, you can expect barrel distortion to swap over to pincushion distortion at longer focal lengths, but that didn’t happen here. There was perhaps a vague hint of it mid-way through the range at 25mm, but nothing at 42mm.

The level of chromatic aberration was equally low. There was a little, right at the edges of the frame, at 14mm, but hardly any at longer focal lengths. Right from the very start, Olympus has made a big song and dance about the optical quality of the Four Thirds format and its lenses, and this one does seem to back up its claims.

All the same, though, it’s hard to be entirely enthusiastic about this lens. Optically, it’s very good indeed, but its handling leaves a lot to be desired. It feels light, a little cheap and distinctly over-complicated. It might look neat and compact when it’s ‘parked’, but it’s another story when it’s extended for use.

Final Verdict Optically, this lens performs really well, but the ‘parking’ mechanism makes it complicated and fiddly and slightly cheap-feeling. OVERALL

Our lens reviewer, and technical expert, Rod is a veritable photographic encyclopaedia. His illustrious CV has seen him write for many mags, websites and journals.