Customer Ratings & Reviews

This camera lens is very compact and light compared to the 18-55mm lens that comes with an Canon EOS Rebel camera. Overall it's very easy to carry around, and I highly recommend this for those who want a 'pancake' lens for taking pictures on-the-go.

This 40mm pancake lens on my Canon SL1 makes a great light weight combo for every day use. Good quality and really clear and bright pictures. The auto focus is fast and quiet making a nice smooth video lens. Good price, especially with the Canon rebate.

Bought this lens the other day and so far it takes great pictures. Who am I kidding? I'm a great photographer! This pancake just gives me a bit of an edge ;) Really, it's a great lens, it's affordable, has great dof, sharp, good contrast, is lightweight which is good for long walks, pretty discrete because of its size, etc. I had the 50mm 1.8 nifty fifty and so far I'd choose the 40mm over the 50mm since the 50mm at 1.8 doesn't produce as sharp pictures as the 40mm at 2.8.

I purchases this lens to film a low light situation for a client. It worked great! The depth of field was fantastic and the picture quality was wonderful. The focus ring is nice and smooth, but gives a sound like someone running their nail over one of those 3d stickers with the grooves. Which is not so great if you are recording onboard audio. The price is high because it's the Canon brand. But the quality is probably worth the cost. Very small lens that will allow the cameraman to get up in the subject's face without them feeling like they are being violated by a huge lens.

This lens has the amazing new "STM" designation. STM lenses are supposedly made for videographers. I also own the 18-135 STM lens. That lens is good for video; the 40mm not so much. First, the good stuff. The lens is tiny and also fast. Not 1.8 fast, but for its size it's pretty impressive. The overall image quality is pretty phenomenal . . . here are photos for you to check out. http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2913459161/photos/2289696/40mmstm-179 http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2913459161/photos/2289695/40mmstm-173 http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2913459161/photos/2289694/40mmstm-165 http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2913459161/photos/2289691/40mmstm-128 Now for the bad: 2.8 is pretty fast, but just not fast enough. And the STM (stepper motor) focusing system is ridiculously loud to be useful at all for video. They say it's silent, fast and accurate. Well, it's accurate, but it's not fast and it's not silent. It's probably about (based on feel alone; not real data) as fast (focusing speed) as my 50mm 1.8. It's definitely not USM. And the focusing noise is stupidly loud in video. It's not all that loud when you're just listening; in fact, you might even miss it. But when you play back the video, it's loud. And the noise is just as apparent whether auto-focusing or manually focusing. Picture quality? Awesome. Size? Awesome. Price? Awesome. Focusing mechanism? Not so awesome.

I really like this lens for my Canon Rebel SL1 - it is compact and lightweight enough that it feels like I have a point-and-shoot instead of a DSLR! 40mm is a good all around focal length for street photography where you don't want to be as noticeable with a much longer zoom lens screaming "DSLR" (my other main lens is the 18-135mm). I will use this lens a lot on those day trips and events where I need to be able to fit my camera into a small bag. It's also good to keep me from being lazy and zooming with a button instead of with my feet! :-)

I already own 7 or 8 Canon lenses and this was largly an impulse purchase (at under $200.00 it's well within the reach of almost all photographers). After reading many positive reviews online I was curious as to its' image quality. The quality of the images this lens produces is excellent, very sharp, very clear with an excellent depth of field. The focus hunts a little but locks on fairly quickly, the 2.8 max aperture makes this a good choice for low light. The Canon 50mm f1.8 is a few dollars less and offers one stop more light collection but doesn't seem as well made as this lens. The 40mm field of view is close to what the human eye sees so the framing is very natural. For me this lens is useful for candid and street photography, it makes a camera like the 5D very un-obtrusive and non threatening, my professional cameras look like slightly oversized consumer superzooms with this lens on them and people go back to acting naturally much more quickly than when a giant white lens is pointed at them. If you are curious or just getting into photography I can highly recommend this little gem of a lens.

It's a great lens for a crop sensor. I have a t5i and after using the "nifty-fifty" I find that this lens still gets you the bokeh you're looking for when shooting portraits and is wide enough to keep you from stepping into traffic when street shooting. It's slim enough to maneuver in crowded areas and fast enough to use in low light situations. In short, it's a great lens.

The Canon 40mm pancake lens is perfect when you want a sharp and lightweight lens instead of lugging around a heavy zoom. Despite the small size there are really no optical compromises. Do yourself a favor and pair it with one of the lightweight Canon Rebels such as an SL1 or T5i. Highly recommended.

I love these lens because of their size. I wanted lens that were small so my Canon T6i wouldn't be so heavy for everyday use. I don't know much about photography so I'm a SUPER beginner, but I really appreciate these lens. Sometimes I think I should have gotten the 50mm, which I bought for a friend and he loved them. But I am satisfied with the 40mm.

Great prime that takes great shots and substitutes well in place of the cheaper/plastic-based 50mm. Nice and quiet shots as well. I don't feel the need to get the nicer 50mm at this point and am quite happy w/ this addition to my (small) collection of the stock 18-55 and 55-200.

Got this as a first prime lens for a Canon Rebel SL1, fits perfect for Canon's smallest DSLR. With the two, it's footprint all but disappears and is very discreet for street photography. Auto Focus is a little slow sometimes and can hunt a bit, but overall a fun lens, and helped me to walk around and compose those shots.

Here is another lens that you need to have when you purchase your camera...all pictures come out so well. My husband is a photographer and he loves this lens.

I bought this lens to cut down on weight and size of my equipment while traveling. This lens fits the bill (literally considering the affordability), and delivers speed and quality, which is equal to heavier and bigger lenses. I am shooting with a Canon 50D and usually carry a Tamron super zoom lens as my main walk around lens. Now I can carry this pancake lens in my pocket, and when packing the gear into a small bag use it instead of a camera body cap, while having the camera ready for a surprise opportunity. I am looking into buying the new Canon SL1 small body, and with the pancake lens, having a really small and light high quality camera at hand all the time.

I'll keep this brief... This lens has excellent optics. It easily bests my Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 L lens at 40mm, hands down. This lens is much sharper across the entire image. The only down side to this lens is the STM system it uses for focusing. While STM is faster than the conventional motor used in the 50mm f/1.8 lens, it is still noisy enough to be heard on video. In addition, manual focusing only works when the camera supplies power to the lens, so when your camera goes to sleep between shooting images the focus ring doesn't do anything at all. It's easy enough to wake it back up -- just a half-press of the shutter button -- but something to be aware of. At f/2.8 maximum aperture, you won't get as shallow a depth of field on this lens as you will on the 50mm f/1.8 (which is considerably cheaper) but the image quality overall on this lens is significantly better. So if you're most concerned about sharpness, get this lens. If you're after a shallow depth of field and maximum bokeh, the nifty fifty is the better choice.

I bought this for use with an Xti and a SL1. It works well with both. The smaller form factor works well with the lighter SL1. Image quality is good and overall this lens is a good value at this price point.

As a novice / intermediate photographer, I wanted to try out another prime lens other than my 50mm f/1.4, but I didn't know which one to get so of course I began researching and found that a lot of reviewers highly recommended the 40mm pancake lens. So when Best Buy had a sale on them I decided to pull the trigger and get one and I am so glad I did. This is a great little everyday lens. It is quiet, solid construction, response is fast, great quality reproduction. There is nothing bad to say about this lens accept under low light conditions you might not capture the shot you want. I've been finding myself using this lens a lot more than my 50mm. For the price you won't be disappointed.

I did not have a prime lens in my collect, so I was looking for a lens that would be compact for video and portraits. I thought the picture and video quality were going to be alright, but this lens really surprised me with its sharpness and the price.

Awesome boka, semi macro, super cheap! Much better than the 50mm

Great value and quality. Lightweight. Love the bokeh. Sometimes autofocusing can drag when too close to subject. Good image quality.