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All manufacturers continues to find ways to reduce production cost in order to make their product as cheap as possible giving the consumer the best value for money. Same had happened with the cheapest lens in the Canon line-up: the EF 50 1.8. Above you see a picture showing both the MKI on the left and the MKII on the right. According to the Canon Museum this changed had reduced the price of the lens tremendously from 21000 yen for the MKI to 12000 yen for the MKII. This can only be achieved by very much simplifying the construction and by removing some features without compromising the optical performance. First they removed the distance scale.

By removing the distance scale, not only is the amount of parts reduced but also the barrel is simplified . Furthermore they have more space internally to put in a Micro motor instead of the AFD motor. This Micro motor is noisier but from my own tests, this MM motor is faster than the AFD of the MKI.

The other and also most discussed change is the mount. Instead of machined steel, it is now made of injection molded glass fiber reinforced polycarbonate. This is strong enough for a lens as light as this. Wear shouldn't also be a problem unless you're changing lenses for each picture you're taking.

The MKI lens originally uses the ES-65 hood but as you can see on the left the EW-65 also fits perfectly on the lens, although it's 9mm shorter than ES-65. Here I deliberately switched them to show how they look. So if you can't find the original you may use the EW-65 instead.