Canon EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens Review

Canon EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM Handling and features

The design of this lens is similar to many of Canon's latest high-end consumer grade lenses. High quality plastics have been used for much of the construction and the lens mount is metal. A silver ring around the rubberised focus ring finishes off the look nicely. Overall the lens has a high quality feel to it and the use of plastics has kept the weight down to a chiropractor friendly 260g. It balances extremely well on the Canon EOS 5D MkII body used for testing.

Autofocus is powered by an ultrasonic motor, and focus speed are very quick. Manual focus adjustments can be made at any time, whether the lens is set to AF or MF. The focusing ring is well damped and has a smooth action, which helps to make fine adjustments easy to apply.

The 58mm filter ring does not rotate as focusing is performed internally. This makes the lens ideal for use with graduated and polarising filters. Closest focus is 23cm, which is great for shooting in cramped environments and even for the occasional close up image.

Including image stabilisation on a wide angle lens like this is an interesting approach. Even so, with care sharp hand held images are possible around half the time with shutter speeds as low as 1/8sec, which is around three stops slower than the usual rule of thumb would allow. The ability to hand hold the camera at such long shutter speeds should open up quite a few creative possibilities.

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