Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

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This Canon EF 28mm is the camera lens that I started out with as a wedding photographer and it will always have a special place in my heart... Now years down the line, I never use this 28mm anymore, but yet I cant find it in me to sell it because of how much it helped jump start my business... Are you looking for great lens, but youre on a budget? Keep reading then... I decided to not take out any loans to start my wedding photography business. Therefore I slowly worked my way to better lenses and equipment. At the time, this was the perfect lens for my crop censored 60D. I was able to get the wide shot I needed to have without having a full sensor DSLR. This lens is super sharp and the f/1.8 is just flat out beautiful! The bokeh it can create can be breathtaking. You dont need the most expensive lens to create the best image possible. Dont be fooled. This lens is a workhorse! Prime Lenses do take some getting used to. I would swap between this and the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Standard at all of my weddings starting out. Now years down the line looking back at this lens the question remains... Do I recommend you getting this lens for wedding photography? The truth is, I dont use the 28mm anymore. I now have a full sensor camera and several lenses that are 4-5 times the cost of this lens and they are much better designed for Wedding Photography than the 28mm ever could dream of being. I know how much greater other lenses are now, but honestly you have to start somewhere and I began right here with the 28mm and Im not ashamed of it. I attached a few images to show you that this 28mm is the real deal. If youre looking for a solid Prime Lens, the 28mm is a great and viable lens to consider. Lenses I would recommend to carry with you as a Wedding Photographer when you have the budget: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Standard Zoom Lens Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras Sigma 15mm f/2.8 EX DG Diagonal Fisheye Lens for Canon SLR Cameras Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

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Ive been using this lens for two years. I have 9 lenses (2 Ls) and this is the one I use the most. I use it on both crop and full frame cameras, indoors and out. Its so good in low light I rarely take a flash with me. Images are true to life with no distortion and its tack sharp at all apertures. I use a tripod with cable release most of the time when shooting landscapes but it doesnt do bad handheld, either. The night shot below is on tripod and the day shot is handheld. Its well worth the price.

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I love this lens! I’ve used the Canon 50mm f/1.4 for a while now and ever since I bought this 28...I’ve been using the 28 a lot! Notes: - The 50 is much better/sharper in terms of image quality. (The 28 almost feels like you are shooting at an ISO higher than your setting) - The build quality is incredible...compared to the 50. My 50’s focus ring is rough and noisy and the AF is scratchy, BUT, this 28 is silent and extremely smooth. I love the feeling. This is a beautiful lens for the price.

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Ive been using this lens almost exclusively since I got it on both a Digital Rebel XTi and an EOS 70D for both stills and video. Youll be hard pressed to get a better picture for the money that this lens costs. On an APS-C camera, this lens should be your standard prime lens that you use every day. What I liked: - The focus is reasonably fast - The focus is reasonably quiet (good for video) - On a crop sensor camera, this comes out to 44-45mm, great angle for indoor shooting of family/kids - f/1.8! No flash required except for the most darkly lit scenes - Its a prime, so images are a lot sharper than most other zooms - It works great for video on the EOS 70D What I didnt like - It is a little soft wide open at f/1.8, f/2-2.8 is a lot sharper, though youll lose about a stop of light and have to open your shutter for longer, f/1.8 is there if you really need it, but f/2+ gives sharper photos. ---- So in a nutshell, this lens has become my new standard prime lens and should be your standard prime lens if you shoot APS-C cameras. If youre looking for a reasonably wide prime lens for indoor shooting on an APS-C sensor, this will give you a lot of bang for your buck. Its dramatically less expensive than the L series, but will get you over 75% of the quality of the L series. Whether the L series is worth the money for that last little bit is up to you.

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Ive delayed this review for a while because when I received this glass I really dont knew what to think at first, so I decided to give it a trial period. Now Ill try to be objective: 1. Focus: fast and accurate. 2. Construction: Solid, good. I recommend using it with hood (mine is a ceap one) and gives extra protection for the front element. 3. Image quality: Here begins to appear the "but" ... This is the point where the 5th star of this review has lost. At f1.8 - f2.0 the image is practically useless in the professional field, at f2.8 you can have acceptable results, but only from f4.0 to f11 it behaves like a fixed lens. If you are used to shoot with optics as the 50mm, 85mm, or L glasses which give exceptional results even wide open, the optical performance of this 28mm is a deception. Possibly in full frame cameras has better performance, but in cameras with APS-C sensor one would expect better rendition from a fixed lens. It isnt bad at all, Its better than a standard zoom, but not as good as other fixed lenses. 4. Angle of view: Its my main reason for choosing this lens. With only two 28mm in Canons Catalogue, I wanted a lens that it would use like a walk-around fixed for APS-C and a wide angle compatible with full frame cameras. In my rebel results to be slightly more angular than a 50mm in full frame, and I like that a lot! It has a very pleasant angle of view. In fact, I bought the 28mm f1.8 and 50mm together, and I must say, I constantly changing from 28mm to 85mm and back, using the 50mm very little. 5. f1.8: Only when I tested the lens in very low light, I could see that the great advantage is its high luminosity. Considering the focal length is possible to take photos at 1/40 - 1/30 without trepidation, and added to the grat diafragme aperture you can achieve correct exposure in low light (although the picture quality is not excellent) without carrying a tripod. With this lens can be achieved pictures that otherwise would only be possible by increasing ISO to levels that decresse image quality much more than shooting wide open. For indoor photography, street night, is where the versatility of this glass compens the "but" of image quality. Resume: It`s not my favorite one, but I like it a lot, and its versatility allows me to take pictures that in other conditions would be very difficult.

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Wonderful lens and works great for wide-shots! Also nice for when taking pictures in my small apartment and have little space to stand back but still want the small aperture!

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This lens works well, and is the primary lens Ive been using (but thats mostly because my other two lenses are cheap Canon lenses.) Wishing I wouldve bought a little bit wider of a lens, but it takes nice shots, autofocuses alright, is a comfortable fitting lens to carry around (I bought a cheap Fotodiox dedicated bayonet lens hood for cheap that Im happy with), and the 1.8 is great. The 1.8 is the main reason I bought it; I shoot predominantly in low-light situations. I kind of wish I wouldve bought the canon 50mm 1.4 instead (didnt because I have the 1.8, but youll never want to touch that lens again once you use the 1.4 -- the focus ring is actually responsive and usable!) but its a fine lens. Ill be very glad to have it once I add some more decent lenses. EDIT: After using it more and more, I really do like it. Im still definitely going to have to add more, but its a very solid lens that I use often even when I have my friends 11-16, 35, 50 1.4 and 85 1.8 UPDATE: Its been a while now, and I bought the 50 f1.4 I was talking about before (which I use a LOT), but I still love this lens. I went ahead and rated it 5 stars, because most of my favorite shots Ive ever gotten were with this lens.) If you attach it to a 5D, it is as wide as I could ever want. On a 7D, its still pretty wide, but gives you a really great look and crispness. So I wouldve still needed this lens, even if I had bought the 50 first.

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Im just an amateur who shoots for hobbies. I mainly picked up this lens because my nearest focal length was 50mm (another prime lens of mine). Im overall extremely happy with this buy. It is definitely a lot more expensive than the nifty-fifty, but you can pretty much take a picture of what you see with your eyes. I was not able to do this with the 50mm prime. I either had to move my object or move back to cram everything in. 50mm took some beautiful portraits, but its just not cool if you constantly have to move back to fit everyone in, for example, on a graduation setting. With the f stop of 1.8 (same as 50mm prime), this lens does amazingly well in dark, indoor settings. And with the 28mm range, I can easily cram everything in. Some have complained about its weight. I, however, personally like this bulky feeling on a lens. My 50mm is really light so it almost feels like Im holding a piece of plastic. This 28mm will give you the feeling of "Im holding an expensive lens" which I enjoy. I know that Canons L lens are the way to go for you experts. However, since I shoot for hobbies, I did not want to spend $1,000+ dollars on a lens. Im glad that I bought this one instead!

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I have been using this lens for about 2 months now on XSI/450D. I replaced my 18-55 with this lens as I tend to shoot in the range of 28-35 on the kit lens. Also I like less glass between me and my subject hence the choice of Prime in this range (btw the other two of mine are primes - 85 1.8 and 200 2.8). I did consider a few lenses in this range like 16-35, 17-40, 28 2.8IS and 35 2 (tried to stay as unbiased as possible to the zooms given my weakness for primes) Eliminated them for the following reasons: 1. 16-35: Beyond Budget 2. 17-40: f4 was too slow since I shoot indoors quite a bit 3. 28 2.8IS: IS is unnecessary at this focal length and drives up the price 4. 35 2: was tough to let this one pass but one extra stop, quiet focusing and robust build quality on the 28 1.8 finally sealed it. I have read reviews about the 28 1.8 being soft wide open. I have a different view to this. Because the DOF at 1.8 is so narrow that its easy to miss focus. And once you do that the photographs turn out soft and the OOF back-lit and bright objects display fringing. Canon Luxury (L) series lenses dont display colored fringes. But then you end up paying 3 times more for that quality of glass. The good thing is that the area in focus is very sharp all the time unless of course the camera wobbles around when the shutter is released shooting wide open. Shooting at 1.8 or wider is an art that needs to be practiced. My humble opinion would be to try shooting wide open initially on stable surfaces or a tripod due to narrow DOF. I noticed a huge difference in my results while shooting wide open on a tripod. Also I have got very sharp results using the center focus point than the outer ones for focussing at f1.8 since only the center one is a cross hair sensor on XSi. I suspect 60D, 7D, 5D mkIII and cameras of that ilk (with multiple cross hair sensor focusing points) will consistently achieve sharp results starting right from f1.8 anywhere in the frame. The reason for mentioning this is just so that you dont get bogged down by those reviews which cite fringing and softness as the reason for not considering this lens. Its very important to thoroughly understand the equipment we own. Once we do that we will be odds-on favourite to achieve great results more often than not. And for those situations where we dont get satisfactory results we should go back and analyze what went wrong. Its surprising how many times I have figured out that it was me rather than my equipment that could have done better. Like they say its not the equipment but people using them that make great photographs (sorry for the cliche though!) I find it very difficult to take this one off my camera. The only reason why I do it is when I need a different field of view for e.g. tight torso portraits (85 1.8) and longer reach (200 2.8) Hope this is of help to some of you out there considering a budget lens at this focal length. This ones a gem! Dont forget to get a hood for this one (Canon EW 63II). Its a must to protect against stray light. The non-Canon ones are flimsy. If you have been, thanks for reading. PKG

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What I want is a prime lens addition to Tamron 17-50/28 for 1.6 crop camera. I like Canon 50/1.8 for this role, but it is medium telephoto which is not really good for landscapes. This lens has mixed reviews including dismissively negative ones, main complaint is that is soft wide open. But in practice using the lens wide open is not the main point, there is no real need for an evening landscape to have the best possible resolution except for special applications. This lens seems to have about as good resolution as 50/1.8, but with much better FOV. As for its main non-L competitor Sigma 30/1.4, as far as I understand, it needs additional adjustment to autofocus properly on Canon cameras. This leaves Canon 28/1.8 as the best choice.

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