This morning, I received my new 40mm pancake lens from Adorama in the USA (not bad considering I only ordered late Friday night). Although I haven't given it a full workout, I thought I'd put down a few of my initial thoughts.
Build
I am very well impressed by the build of this lens for a non-L lens. For its size, it feels very solid and well made, with no rattling or looseness of the focus ring. It definitely feels better made than the 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.8 that I use regularly (this is not to say that there are any issues with the build quality of the 50 and 85).
Size
The size of the lens actually surprised me. I was actually expecting it to be a little smaller than it is. Although it is small, it is still seems a bit bigger than the other pancake lens I have had experience with, namely the venerable Pentax 40mm f2.8 DA SMC Limited. I will say though that it has been a long time since I have used the Pentax, so I haven't had the opportunity to compare them side-by-side. Nevertheless, the new lens is certainly very compact. It is dwarfed by the nightly 1D MkIV and almost succeeds in turning the 5D MkII a pocketable full frame DSLR, albeit only when wearing a pair of oversized over-pocketed cargo pants.
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| Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Pancake Lens on the 1D MkIV |
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| Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Pancake Lens on 5D MkII |
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| Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Pancake Lens on 5D MkII |
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| Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Pancake Lens on 5D MkII |
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| Cutie Combo - The 40mm on an EOS 500D/Digital Rebel T1i/Kiss X3 Digital |
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Image Quality and Performance
Although I haven't really had much of a chance to put the lens through its paces I managed to take a short walk around North Sydney during my lunch break and after work. Thus far, the image quality is looking promising. Initial impressions are:
- Images seem very sharp even wide open at f/2.8
- Images are contrasty
- Colours are crisp and striking.
- Focus seems fast and relatively silent although not quite as silent as the SDM lenses.
- Distortion seems fairly minimal for a lens of this focal length.
- I really like the field of view on the 1.3 crop factor of the 1D MkIV. It equates to roughly normal at 52mm equivalent.
- I haven't really used the manual (focus-by-wire) focus, so can't really comment.
Samples
A few more samples can be viewed on my
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Cheers
