With the large maximum aperture, excellent background blur is possible even with a fast shutter speed. The aspherical lens element makes the lens compact and corrects spherical aberrations. The image is sharp even at the edges. Lead-free glass is used.

Released back in 1995 the Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM is one of the few relatively new fix-focal in the lower focal length range that we’ve seen in the last years. Regarding its release date it is obviously a full frame lens. On APS-C DSLRs it has a field-of-view equivalent to a classic 45mm lens so it can be considered as a standard lens here.

The optical construction is made of 10 elements in 9 groups with one aspherical element. Its minimum focus distance is 0.25m resulting in a max. object magnification of 1:5.5. The aperture mechanism has 7 aperture blades. The filter size is 58mm. It has a size of 74x56mm and despite its large aperture the weight is relatively moderate at only 310g. A petal-type hood is optional.

The lens is quite a beauty with a very solid construction thanks to very good quality plastics. The very broad, rubberized focus ring has a smooth action. The front element does not rotate so using a polarizer is no problem. The focusing speed is pretty fast and thanks to USM the AF noise level is near silent. Typical for ring-type USM drives full-time manual focusing is possible.

Read more at Canon USA

Reviews

Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM Lens Review by the-digital-picture.com

The Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM Lens is soft wide open. Stop the aperture down to f/2.8 and the center becomes sharp. Mid-frame performance (on a full frame DSLR) is softer – even stopped down. Corner performance does not degrade much (if any) over the mid-frame results. I’m disappointed by the sharpness delivered from this lens. It’s not what I expected.

Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM – Review by photozone.de

Generally the verdict for the Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM cannot be better than for its Sigma counterpart – high center performance but substantially worse borders. This is more so disappointing because this full frame lens was tested on an APS-C DSLR. The sweet spot effect has a positive effect on vignetting which is nothing to worry about. The distortion figures are pretty low but chromatic aberrations are hefty comparable to ultra-wide zoom lenses. So in total the lens may be good but we expect more from a fix-focal lens even though the design of a large aperture lens with a moderate pricing was certainly far from being simple.