Want to lighten your load? The best pancake lenses for Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic and other camera systems will do just that!
Small, lightweight and affordable, the best pancake lenses come as prime lenses as well as zooms – the latter of which need to be 'telescoped' out before shooting. As the name suggests, the lenses get their name from their flat, thin profile.
They’re designed to protrude as little as possible from the camera body to keep your setup slim, unobtrusive and easy to stow away. This makes them among the best lenses for street photography, as well as for everyday shooting and travel photography.
So, with that in mind, here are the best pancake lenses you can find right now… just don't drizzle maple syrup on them unless they're weather sealed!
Olympus
An absolute favorite of mine is the astonishingly slim yet impressively performing Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5 f/5.6 EZ Pancake lens. Commonly paired with similarly svelte PEN cameras and the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV, it is a liposuctioned version of the larger 14‑42mm f/3.5‑5.6 II R kit lens.
While it's a capable lens, obviously its standout quality is the optical wizardry of squeezing a 28-84mm equivalent standard zoom (thanks to Micro Four Thirds 2x crop factor) into an optic that's scarcely larger than a tin of Vaseline.
That versatile focal range means that you really can slap this one single lens on the front of your camera and be covered for almost any shooting situation – making it a perfect choice for street shooting, travel photography, or just everyday walkabout use. In fact, it's so slim that you can leave it on your camera in place of a body cap, so that you can always grab your camera and shoot without faffing for a lens.
It captures very respectable images, and very much comes into its own as a video lens, since the fully motorized zoom can smoothly and near-silently push in and out of your scene to record more dynamic footage. That electronic zoom also means that you can fully control the focal length from your phone when shooting remotely!
• Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42mm EZ Pancake review
Canon RF
This pancake prime is the smallest lens yet for the Canon EOS R mirrorless system. It is compatible with full-frame cameras - but can be equally useful on an RF-S model such as the Canon EOS R100, where it offer an effective focal length of 38mm.
Although it only weighs 120g, this lens doesn't feel cheap or poorly made. On the contrary, it appears to be a well-built optic - but understandably for its price, doesn't have any weather sealing.
A customizable ring at the front of the lens can be adjusted using a small selector switch on the side. This toggles it between being a control ring (for exposure control) and a traditional manual focus ring. However, because of how thin this ring is, some people will find it difficult to use for manual focus.
• Canon RF 28mm f/2.8 STM review
Viltrox
I've been impressed with some of the compact and lightweight lenses that Viltrox makes for crop-sensor cameras but this tiny prime is compatible with full-frame Sony mirrorless cameras and is amazingly small even for a pancake lens.
Despite only being about half an inch thick and only weighing a couple of ounces, it features a stepping motor autofocus system. One thing that's lacking, however, is an aperture diaphragm, so you're limited to shooting at f/4.5. The lens has a simulated 8-sided diaphragm by way of a cutout.
The optical path is based on six optical elements arranged in six groups, featuring two aspherical elements and two ED (Extra-low Dispersion) elements.
See our full Viltrox AF 28mm f/4.5 FE review
Fujifilm
Partnered with one of Fujifilm's X-Series range of mirrorless cameras, this neat little pancake lens delivers a 40mm focal length in full-frame terms. This classic focal length makes it ideal for a range of subjects, from general shooting to street photography. It's not the fastest prime here with a maximum aperture of f/2.8, and it's certainly not the fastest at autofocusing, either, but both are acceptable compromises for a pancake.
Incredibly light at only 94g it's a proper pancake lens, measuring only 62x23mm. Unlike the original version this model is weather-sealed, if you have a body to complement it. It makes a great match with the likes of the Fujifilm X-S10 or Fujifilm X-T30, and the combination will certainly fit into a large coat pocket when you want to travel light. An excellent all-purpose optic!
Sony
While some of the Sony's primes might be on the bulky side, nothing good be further from the truth with this neat little pancake lens. Weighing only 69g and a smidge over 20mm in length, this is one real compact lens, even by pancake lens standards. Designed for Sony's range of APS-C mirrorless cameras like the Sony A6400, the 30mm focal length terms means it's a moderate wide-angle prime. This makes it great for general shooting, though it's not ideally suited to flattering portraits.
There's no optical stabilization, so it might benefit from being paired with a Sony Alpha like the A6600 that enjoys in-body image stabilization, but it's small and light enough to make it really easy to handhold and shoot with without any technology to help you out. You'll certainly be better served by the Sony FE 20mm f/1.8 G if you're after ultimate image quality, but then it's a much bigger and pricier lens. A great little lens to have in your kit bag if you're a Sony shooter.
Nikon Z
The Nikon Z DX 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 VR is a pancake zoom that perfectly suits the small size of cameras like the Nikon Z50. It’s tiny, it’s light and it’s sure to prove popular with travel and street photographers alike. Its ability to focus down to 0.2m is mighty impressive, though the minimum distance increases with focal length.
Although this lens' plastic build may lack that premium feel, the addition of a silent control ring is a welcome mod con – and will be welcome for video shooters wishing to adjust aperture silently from the nose. What the Z DX 16-50mm lacks in speed, it makes up for in price, versatility and convenience. APS-C kit lenses are usually pretty big and clunky, and many camera owners will dream of a compact kit lens like this.
The Nikkor DX 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 VR does not offer the constant maximum aperture or optical quality of a pro lens, but its performance is excellent for a low-cost kit lens – and the fact that it's so compact, fast and silent makes it a first class everyday zoom for this camera.
Indeed, much as we love the Nikon Z50, we have to admit that the system would be significantly less compelling were it not for this magic piece of glass!
• Nikon Z DX 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 VR review
Olympus fisheye
Another firm favorite of mine, the Olympus 9mm f/8 Fisheye Body Cap Lens is one of the most unusual – and most brilliant – lenses I've ever used, and it's an absolutely perfect pancake performer.
On paper, it may seem a Lomography-like toy lens; its elements are constructed of plastic and it only has a single aperture setting (f/8). However, these things are all to its advantage as that makes this optic literally as thin and as light as a pancake! It's an ingenious bit of design, as the lens is only moderately thicker than a body cap lens – so you can leave it on your camera in lieu of a cap, and be ready to shoot at a moment's notice.
Moreover, when affixed to a body like the Olympus PEN E-PL10 you achieve an incredible street photography setup – right down to Weegee's immortal "f/8 and be there" mantra. While on one hand that small aperture can seem limiting, it only adds to the true performance of this lens, increasing the depth of field and making it fantastic for street, travel and reportage.
Further, it features light fisheye characteristics (with full frame coverage), meaning that you can experiment with extreme field of view effects without having to shell out for a dedicated fisheye lens. And best of all, it's dirt cheap, retailing for well under 100 bucks in the UK and US, making it an absolutely no-risk purchase.
See our full Olympus 9mm f/8 Fisheye Body Cap Lens review
Canon EF-S
This Canon lens for APS-C format DSLRs has a pancake design that enables a super-slim profile just 23mm deep. It's also a real lightweight at 125g - less than half the weight of Canon’s more conventional EF 24mm lens f/2.8 lens for full-frame DSLRs.
The six-element optical stack includes one aspherical element, Super Spectra coatings, and there's a fairly well-rounded seven-blade diaphragm. Autofocus is courtesy of a quick and quiet stepping motor, with an electronically coupled manual focus ring, though this is rather small and fiddly.
This 24mm optic has an ‘effective’ focal length of 38.4mm, which can feel a little narrow for street photography compared to a 35mm focal length. There’s also no image stabilizer, which can be more of a problem given the relatively slow f/2.8 max aperture.
Image quality is impressive with excellent sharpness across the frame and amazingly little color fringing, even without using in-camera corrections.
• Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM review
TTartisan
If you love the idea of the Fujifilm XF 27mm pancake, but don't love the price, the TTartisan 27mm f/2.8 XF is a brilliant alternative at a fraction of the cost. Performance is, broadly, on a par as well – it has the same aperture and offers a similar degree of sharpness, though sadly it also suffers from noisy autofocus (but not as bad as the Fujifilm lens!). It also introduces very noticeable vignetting, but this is nothing that can't be cleared in a couple of clicks in post.
It lacks the weather sealing of the Fujifilm version, though since many people use pancakes on non weather-sealed bodies this isn't a huge issue. In all this is a sharp little lens, weighs and measures next to nothing, and is an absolute bargain at just over a hundred bucks – there's really no reason not to add it to your kit bag.
See our full TTartisan 27mm f2.8 review
Lab data and comparisons
The graphs below show the comparative performance of the lenses in this guide, based on our in-house lab tests. The Sony E 20mm leads the group for sharpness, with the Canon EF-S 24mm also putting in a very good show. The Viltrox AF 28mm is impressively sharp for such a low-budget lens. Results are a little mixed for color fringing and, as expected, the Olympus 9mm has massive barrel distortion as a ‘fisheye’ lens.
Scores for sharpness and color fringing are averaged from data taken across the entire image frame, from the center to the edges and corners, throughout the aperture range. For zoom lenses, the scores are also averaged from data measured at all marked focal lengths, and the same applies to distortion. Bear in mind that these average values don't fully reflect specific areas of performance. For example, a zoom lens might have noticeable barrel and pincushion distortion at its shortest and longest focal lengths respectively, which tends to average out when looking at the data overall. For more detailed graphs of each lens's performance, which give the full picture, check out the graphs in our full standalone lens reviews.
How we test
How we test lenses
Why you can trust Digital Camera World Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out how we test.
We test lenses using both real world sample images and lab tests. Our lab tests are carried out scientifically in controlled conditions using the Imatest testing suite, which consists of custom charts and analysis software that measures resolution in line widths/picture height, a measurement widely used in lens and camera testing. We find the combination of lab and real-word testing works best, as each reveals different qualities and characteristics.
