Canon EF 28 mm f/ 2.8 Lens

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Optical design

Format: 35mm SLR

Type: Prime lens

Focusing: Auto Focus (AF)

Lens mounts: Canon EF, EF-S, Canon EF, EF-S

First year of production: 1987

Optical design: 5 elements in 5 groups

User reviews (2)

Photos (2)

Tests (0)

Owners (5)

Views (5971)

Average price: $327

Specifications:

Focal length	Max. aperture	Min. aperture	Blades	Min. Focus (m.)	Filter Ø (mm.)	Weight (gr/oz)	Length (mm/in)
28mm	f/2.8	f/22	5	0.3	52	185/6,5	42.5/1,7

Additional information:

The Canon EF 28 mm f/ 2.8 is an exceptionally compact fast wide-angle lens for Canon EOS film and digital cameras.

The lens is inexpensive, but rather good in terms of its characteristics.

The optical scheme includes an aspherical element, which makes it possible to reduce the lens dimensions and greatly minimize spherical aberration.

Thanks to a small number of optical elements in the lens construction, transparency increases, and the risk of spurious flare, which affects contrast, is minimized. Besides, a small number of elements make the lens less expensive and thus more affordable for users. However, it is well known that the best of Carl Zeiss and Leica lenses rarely utilize more than 5 or 6 elements in their schemes.

With a wide angle and a 2.8 lens speed the Canon 28 mm f/2.8 shows good results in poor lighting conditions without a tripod or a flash.

It is rather sharp at f/2.8. And it is very sharp from f/4 onwards.

It has a 5-blade aperture. Despite the fact, out-of-focus blurring (bokeh) is rather good. Point light sources are blurred into almost a full disc, and in general, pentagons, characteristic of such lenses, are not clearly pronounced.

A built-in focusing motor is rather noisy. Focusing in poor lighting conditions is often difficult.

The lens is not well resistant to back and side light. A hood is strongly recommended.

The Canon EF 28 mm f/2.8 is useful for landscape, architecture, interior and genre photography. It can be used for full-length portraits. It is ideally fit for video shooting on modern SLR cameras. In general, a rule of thumb states that 28 mm is one of the most popular focal lengths. It is very good as a kit lens for APS-C (crop factor) cameras. Equivalent focal length in this case is 45 mm.

Compatible hood: EW-65II

Links to online resources:

Test, review on photozone.de

PDF Files:

Instruction manual (views: 35)
Service manual (views: 188)
Instruction manual for Canon EF 28 mm f/ 2.8 (ENG) (views: 29)
technical data and description (Ger.): EF 28mm 2,8 (views: 9)

Posted by: Sergei Borodin Date of publication: 23.08.2010

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Photos taken with this lens Canon EF 28 mm f/ 2.8:

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Interior
Autor: xenontik

1999

Interior
Autor: xenontik

1.5

2154

Mechanical quality	3.33	3
Optical quality	3.67	3
Usability	4.00	3
Pricing / Value	3.00	3
Bokeh	3.33	3
Overall lens rating	3.47

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Owner reviews: Canon EF 28 mm f/ 2.8

NerveNet 16.08.2021 19:01:11

Period of use: 3 years

Strengths:

Cheap
Light
Small
Handy f/2.8 aperture
DOF marks for f/5.6, f/11 and f/16
Metall mount gasket

Weaknesses:

Unpleased manual focus ring, small and wrongly placed
Noisy and slow autofocus motor
Missing f/8 DOF mark

Comments:

Don't understand me wrong, it is a nice, bright and cheap 28mm which it includes autofocus in the price.

But things are worse when using this lens manually, the focus ring is very thin, if you use the DOF marks as frecuently as me you will notice that they should have included f/8 marks.

Regarding performance, this lens need to be stopped at f/5.6 or f/8 in order to get the best out of it, extreme corners will be still unsharp, but who looks there?

Wide open it is sharp and shows good contrast in the center of the frame. Corners are other story.

I used it a lot with an APS-C camerabody like the Canon EOS 50D, on such cropped sensors this lens works pretty good as poor corners are not shown. On such ASP-C cameras it covers the viewing angle of an equivalent 45mm full frame lens.

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