They call it a pancake lens. So small people will wonder if you forgot to put a lens on your camera. Smaller than a lens hood. But oh so sharp!
The small, cheap and sharp Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Lens is a fixed lens that is small, light and actually takes great photos all for under $200.
I recently rediscovered this lens in my collection after kind of forgetting about it. It was one of the first Canon lenses I added after the 24-105mm that came with the camera.
When I first moved up from smaller micro four thirds cameras to the full frame Canon 6D I remarked to a friend about how large the camera felt. The Panasonic G3 that I had been using was giving me hand cramps after a long day of shooting. The Canon 6D felt much better but attracted a lot of attention with the 24-105mm mounted on it. So a friend suggested the 40mm pancake.
Of course now I’m not so self conscious except perhaps in the city. One of the other times I made good use of this lens was walking around New York City when I didn’t want a heavy lens or to stand out too much.
This morning I had to take my wife’s car in to get some windshield chips fixed so I mounted the pancake to my camera and took a walk. I found this old Dodge truck in the weeds.
The Canon 40mm at f8 created a very sharp image and I processed it with a cross process method in Adobe Lightroom.
Cross process mimics the colors you’d get by processing color film in the wrong chemicals. Such as color slide film in color negative film chemicals or the opposite, color negative film in color slide chemicals.
Old Dodge in the Weeds – Cross processed image – https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/featured/old-abandoned-pickup-truck-in-the-weeds-edward-fielding.html
Products used in this article: