Introduction

Worldwide Availability

When Olympus announced its E-400 towards the end of last year, it arrived with the dubious honour of being the first DSLR not to be available worldwide, with Olympus USA deciding not to take the camera. With North America effectively ‘opting out’ of the E-400, rumours quickly appeared on internet forums that the new Four-Thirds standard camera was nothing more than a ‘stopgap’. The fact that Olympus USA was unwilling to sell it suggested to some that this particular arm of Olympus didn’t see it as a long-term proposition and were therefore unwilling to invest time and money in marketing the new DSLR. Of course, no one from Olympus was going to confirm that the E-400 would be short-lived, and the official line from Olympus USA was that it wanted to continue focusing its efforts on the E-500 and E-330 models instead.


E-400 Replacement

Yet here we are, less than a year later looking at its successor – the E-410 – which does indeed suggest that the original E-400 was never intended to be a long-term DSLR, especially given how few differences there are between old and new. They both look identical on the outside and a quick glance over their respective spec sheets shows that the internal changes are few and far between too.

However, there are some differences, and most of these are quite fundamental, so perhaps it’s these that held back the E-410’s development and convinced Olympus to launch the E-400 in the meantime. Or maybe, just maybe, the E-400 wasn’t a stopgap at all…