The final pancake - the plastic 50mm f/1.8 AI-S pancake

The final 50mm f/1.8 AI-S manual focus lens, with its 0.6m minimum focus distance and missing rabbit ear/coupling prong, was a lens that was following the times and a shift away from previous Nikkors and their mostly metal construction. Whilst there was an earlier 50mm f/1.8 AI-S pancake which could focus down to 0.45m like the long nose version, that version was only available in Japan and short lived whereas this 50mm pancake superceded both the Japanese pancake and the long nose. Identifying the latter pancake can be done via the serial numbers (starting 4xxxxxxx) and the distinct shiney plastic-ness, particularly of the aperture ring and the additional bump on chrome index/grab ring - this bump was supposedly to help users to quickly orientate the lens, given the missing rabbit ears of earlier AI/AI-S lenses.



So what's this pancake like?