Best Rated Digital Camera World

EF 28MM F/1.8 USM

User Reviews about Canon EF 28mm f 1.8 USM Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this little lens. There are many things I really love about it, but there's one big fat negative. Let's start with the good:

+ Small, light, and fast enough for indoor work. This is the reason I love little primes for travel, family events, and portrait work. They are smaller, lighter, easier to carry, and offer great creative options

+ Reasonably sharp wide open. Stopped down to f/2.8, it's very sharp and contrasty

+ Build quality is excellent. This lens is very nicely built, has great smooth quiet autofocusing, and the focusing ring is nice and wide enough to comfortably use. I like that it's heavier than my nifty fifty and has a solid metal mount.

+ Great focal length for a 1.6 crop body. On my 7D, this lens is fabulous. The field of view on a 1.6 crop body is near the classic 50mm on 35mm film length. It's a great focal length for shooting family events and get-togethers. Very little distortion from this lens make it a good fit for portraiture also.

+ Color saturation and contrast are excellent. This little lens renders color wonderfully especially under great lighting conditions. It's a substantial change from the nifty fifty in this department.

+ Beautiful OOF (out of focus) areas. The bokeh is wonderful on this lens. It's creamy and very smooth.

Now, for the big fat con.

- The CA (chromatic aberration) is horrible on this lens wide open and even stopped all the way down to f/4. On the 7D, this is much less noticeable, but on my 1D2 (1.3 crop sensor), the CA in the corners is absolutely horrendous at f/1.8. I'm talking about huge blatant purple and green fringing in all four corners that distract from the subject in areas where white meets darker colors in the corners and along the edges of the frame. This is very unfortunate, as this lens is really great in all other departments. I was sorely disappointed when I first saw this, and I can't imagine how bad it is on a full frame body in the corners. Although CA can be removed in post processing, CA to this degree should not be present for a lens this expensive. It's really no excuse for it. When I first saw it, I thought my lens was faulty, but after taking it to a local service center, turns out, it isn't.

If you avoid high contrast areas in the corners of your images, you'll be perfectly delighted with this little lens. I am keeping mine simply because there are no other affordable options in this focal length and speed from Canon currently, and the image quality (aside from the CA) is very good. It's light, easily portable, and a decent value for the money. I just avoid high contrast areas in the edges of my frame when it is mounted to my 1D2.

If you are looking to buy this lens, be very aware of the CA issues, and think about whether this will be a substantial problem for you. If so, I'd recommend saving for the 24L, 35L, or 17-40 L instead (if you don't need f/1.8) if you can. The 17-40 controls CA much better than this lens does at the cost of speed and size. If not, this little lens is a good choice.

Unfortunately, Canon doesn't currently offer many fast prime lenses under 35mm that are affordable for most people, and of the lot of them, this is the best one with regards to build quality, speed, and image quality. I hope to see an update to this lens very soon as it could be a great lens.


-- Great little lens, bad CA issues

"A good lens with a bad Internet rap" - that's what I read about this lens while doing my research on it, and now that I own it, I must say that it's probably the truest thing I've read. While not perfect, it's not nearly as bad as most reviews would have you believe.
I spent a long time choosing between this lens as well as Canon 35mm, and Sigma 30mm. I finally eliminated 35mm for not having USM, which I find quite nice.
I really didn't want Sigma just because I like primes, and I want a collection of primes that I can use both on my current crop, and on my future full-frame. In addition, Sigma seems notorious for focus issues that need calibration, which I was not looking forward to. But everyone was raving about Sigma, so I ended up getting both 28mm and Sigma 30mm, to compare.
I got Canon first and the first trial shots were HORRIBLE, I was very disappointed.
Then Sigma arrived and I did comparison shots. Suddenly, the lenses behaved very well and photos turned out very comparable.
Sigma did seem to have a SLIGHT edge in sharpness and bokeh over Canon. But I felt that the two drawbacks of Sigma, that I mentioned above, were more major than a slight advantage I would get by choosing Sigma. So, I returned Sigma and kept Canon.

So far, the only thing I'm not happy about (thus the 4 stars and the "not perfect" comment) is how unkind it seems to the sky. I've had more blown out skies with this lens than with 50mm or 85mm. Before I get a bunch of comments telling me to learn how to use my camera instead of complaining - I'd like to point out that a few other reviewers on here seemed to also note that this camera gets overwhelmed by light particularly easy, so I'm guessing it's not just me.
Another thing I've read a lot and that I found true - 28mm does seem to hunt for focus a bit more than my 85mm, but so far it has not been an issue, and Sigma hunted in similar conditions as well. -- "A good lens with a bad Internet rap", compares well to Sigma 30mm

I like this lens a lot. I use it most f the time when I run around with my camera and for portraits of more than one person. Also if I shoot in a small space this lens gives me enough room to shoot the portrait where the 50mm would cut of things. I am very pleased with the buy and would recommend this product to anybody who wants to spend this kind of money. -- A good buy

The EF 28mm f/1.8 USM is an odd animal, with users either loving or hating its optical characteristics. Physically, there's nothing to complain about. The lens is solidly constructed, the focusing travel is contained within the barrel, it uses the USM system with full-time manual focus, and the filter ring is the popular 58mm style. All of these features nicely differentiate it from the EF 28mm f/2.8, which is comparatively compromised in all of these areas (but is probably a better value for the money, oddly).

The first sign of trouble may be the integrated rectangular shield inside the front element assembly. While this probably helps reduce flaring and artifacts, neither of its close relatives -- the EF 28mm f/2.8 or the EF 20mm f/2.8 USM -- require such a feature. Disagreeable vignetting can occur, even on a crop body and with moderately bright indoor light, when stopped open. Light bloom is also excessive when wide open, and some users have reported chromatic aberration, although I haven't personally seen it. Conversely, performance is excellent in very low light and outdoor night shots with long exposure times.

I consider this essential glass for flashless photography under low-light conditions, particularly indoors in close quarters, as the wide angle and wide aperture will effectively gather all of the light and people in a room. Combined with a high ISO setting in the 800+ range, sharp images can be taken at reasonably quick shutter speeds, then subjected to noise cleanup during post-processing. However I don't use the lens as much outdoors during daytime, or indoors in brightly-lit areas. The EF 20mm f/2.8 USM handles these situations far better and is a good complement for the EF 28mm f/1.8 USM.

Summarily, the main issues with this lens is price. For about $375, everyone should get one. But for the $450+ range where this lens usually sells, it is overpriced relative to what it offers. Hopefully Canon will develop a Mark II version of this lens that improves on the optical characteristics while retaining the physical features and build quality. -- Love it or hate it, but there's no middle ground

you will be really happy with this lens. I currently am using this lens on my Canon T1i. This 28MM lens is a 44.8MM lens on a crop-body. This is Canons widest prime lens that is reasonably priced for the photo enthusiast, for whom it has been marketed. The lens is very sharp between f4.0 and f8.0! Below f4.0 the lens softens, as they all due. However, it softens much less so than other lenses I have tried. The results are very good from f2.0 up. -- If you are a Canon crop-body user