Hey Ya'll! How's it going? Hope you've had a great week. This week I want to talk about a pancake! No not that kind but I do love them as well. I'm talking about pancake lenses. Small little thin lenses that can make your camera look very small indeed. Great for street photography or travel photography. Many new cameras come with pancake lenses permanently attached like the FujiFilm X100 series of cameras that are very popular come with a fixed 23mm lens which give it a 35mm full frame equivalent. There is also the Ricoh GR series which come in a 26mm or a 40mm full frame equivalent. Both of these cameras are considered street or travel cameras because of their size and versatility.  I love my primes and when I had a full frame I had a 35mm and a 50mm but now that I'm shooting a crop sensor exclusively I needed something wider. The 35mm that I have will act like my 50 and the 50 I have will act like a 75 but I needed something a little wider. When shooting film I love the 28mm focal length but it digital cameras there aren't that many out there. But Sony has a 20mm which would be a 30mm in full frame which is right between the 28 and the 35mm. So I thought I would try it. This lens has been out for quite a while and is even pretty old . It was released in 2013. I have the Sony 20mm 1.8 lens and it works great but it is large for street or travel I mainly use it for Astro. This lens is really inexpensive and I bought it used in like new condition for 160 bucks from MPB. The company that I buy and sell my used camera stuff from. So here's a little about the lens. Here is a link to a video on this lens Max's Kitchen Gear Talk "Sony 20mm 2.8 Lens"

This lens is a APSC lens. Which means it is built for a APSC camera and is much smaller than the same lens would be for a full frame camera. The Sony 20mm f1.8 that I mentioned before is for a full frame but will still work on a APSC camera but is much larger than the one made for APSC. So it's a small lens. It only weighs 2.4 oz. So it's very lightweight. A plus in my book. The less weight I have to carry the better. It has a minimum focus distance of almost 8 inches. Not so great for shooting close up stuff. It is only 20mm tall. So it has a very low profile. It has a 49mm filter thread which is very common so I don't have to buy anything different I have many 49mm Polarizer filters. It will fit any crop sensor Sony camera. So those are the specs how does it operate?

I took this out on a test run at a local town where Robert (my photography wingman) and I did a one prime lens challenge. The photo's that you see on this blog were taken by this little lens. I think they turned out great! I didn't have any problems with focusing it focus pretty quickly. Sharpness was good enough for me. I really enjoyed walking around and shooting with this focal length. It seemed to be the right distance for things I was looking at. Across the street shots were a little wide but the same side of the street it seemed to be perfect. I was pleasantly surprised. What will this lens be used for by me? I have three travel zooms. A 10-18 f2.8 a 18-50 f 2.8 and a 70-300. This little lens won't be kicking any of these lenses out of my travel kit. But just like the other primes in my bag they will be fun to shoot with on a one on one bases. Kind of like the shoot I did today with Robert. A one prime lens challenge. Which is always fun. Sometimes I just like shooting primes and I now have three that will give me Wide, Normal, Tele distances. Which would be a fun challenge in itself a prime only day. I think that it will be a great addition to my Sony APSC kit. If you shoot Sony APSC I would Highly recommend this lens. Until Next week . Get Out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link