Smaller, lighter and usually a faster aperture. They also often offer better IQ over kit lenses.
That's only for the pancake primes, the pancake zooms are just smaller and lighter.
Nodo Canon make a 50mm pancake?
That's the same size as the old 50mm, it's small, but not really a pancake lens.
Yeah, I wondered if the OP had confused pancakes and primes.
Its more of a case of I don't know what I'm on about! lol.
could someone please explain what the definition of a "prime" and "pancake" lenses are?
As a huge generalisation, Yes.Thanks for explaining.
So is the image quality from a prime lens better that that of a zoom lens?
As a huge generalisation, Yes.
But they're also faster, cheaper, and much less convenient to use.
That said, zooms teach people really bad habits about use of focal length. Where they believe that staying in one place and zooming to change what is in a shot is the right thing. Which totally ignores that focal length choice and position is how we manipulate the relationship between objects.