Minolta MD Rokkor 45mm f/2

The eBay listings keep calling it a pancake. It isn't one. Minolta did build a true pancake, the Rokkor-TD 45mm f/2.8 of 1964, and that lens was 17 mm thick. The MD Rokkor 45mm f/2 measures about 30 mm and weighs 125 g, so it is slim and light without being flat, and mounted on a small body the distinction stops mattering very quickly.

Minolta's own lens data dates the Japanese release to September 1978, and the 45 was one of the new designs that came in with the MD II generation. It never wore anything else. No MC version came before it, and no plain MD version followed after 1981. Inside are six elements in five groups behind a 49 mm filter thread. North American copies carry the Rokkor-X name; the glass is identical.

The pictures are better than the budget label suggests. Sharpness is its strong suit. Color comes out accurate rather than saturated. Wide open there is some vignetting, the kind that reads as personality more than flaw, while the background blur is pleasant and stays out of the subject's way. Stop down and the five blades turn out-of-focus highlights into small pentagons. Strong light from the front brings out flare and ghosting, so a hood is worth carrying.

Jeb Inge, reviewing it for Casual Photophile, said it gave him the sharpest, most reliable images of any lens he owned. His well-regarded 50mm f/1.4 stayed home because he preferred the 45's size and weight, and he never caught himself wishing for the extra speed. It looks right on a small body like the XD. Forty-five millimeters is a shade wider than a fifty, enough to keep a little of the scene around a person, and that makes it a natural documentary lens.

Close focus is where it runs out of road. Focus stops at 0.6 m, which handles a portrait across a café table but leaves the coffee cup small in the frame. The aperture ring is the other limit: it ends at f/16, a stop short of the f/22 found on many MD primes, and that missing stop bites on bright days. With 400-speed film on snow or bright sand, the sunny 16 rule already asks for about f/16 at 1/1000, and plenty of Minolta bodies of the era have nothing faster. A 49 mm ND filter buys the room back; add it in Zone Light Meter and its factor is folded into the reading.

Inge's review put typical used prices at roughly US$25 to $50 in July 2017, and at that price he called it one of the best values on the manual-focus market. It was a common, inexpensive lens, so copies are not hard to find. Speed is the usual objection. Minolta's MD 50mm f/1.7 is only about half a stop faster, and the f/1.4 that Inge left at home gains a full stop, which matters after dark and very little in daylight. Pick on focal length instead. If a fifty always feels a touch tight, the 45 is the easy fix.