Canon RF 28mm F2.8

Pancake delight…

This lens has been a fun little gem that punches high above its tiny size, of course some of that is aided by digital correction that keeps even the extreme corners looking clean. Turning the auto corrections off on this lens is not something I think most people would do or really should do, that is unless you want to be a bit upset about pay full price for it. At $299 this lens is still a decent however a bit over priced lens option if you are looking to add a very small prime lens to your kit. However if you can get this lens on sale it becomes a far better deal. I happened to get mine during a big summer sale Canon was running so I snatched it for a meager $199 which made it quite a steal.

The Canon RF 28mm F2.8 has a great overall global rendering that offers well balanced and sharp images with decent resolution and overall good contrast. Also the lens handles bright highlights and flares quite well. The lens’s nice overall rendering is complimented by a quite neutral color rendering if not perhaps a touch warm when flared. The lens has a very smooth overall look with nicely accentuated fine detail at the point of focus, micro contrast is good but not exceptional.

The lens has some interesting bokeh deformation toward the edges of the frame, this aberration is known as Coma, and although it’s not severe it’s something that gives the lens some imperfections that reminds me of a vintage lens in many ways. Since Coma does not have a color aspect I much prefer its presence to any latitudinal chromatic aberration which is often present in vintage lenses. In the RF lens latitudinal chromatic aberration (red and blue fringing toward the edges of the frame) is automatically fully corrected by any modern image editing software with a profile for this lens.

350% 3:2 cropped (1920×1280) - to highlight the bokeh & Coma on the Canon RF 28mm F2.8 @ F2.8 on my EOS R

~200% 16:9 cropped for detail of Canon RF 28mm F2.8 @ F2.8 on my EOS R

~200% 3:2 cropped for detail of Canon RF 28mm F2.8 @ F2.8 on my EOS R

As can be seen from the examples above, the lens renders image with good detail and sharpness across the focus range, close up performance holds up pretty well as can be seen the shot of the bottle. The lens does fall off quite a bit toward the edges so if you want the highest performance in terms of detail rendering it’s best to keep the point of focus toward the center of the frame. Color rendering is pleasing and neutral and matches well with the other Canon RF lenses I own. Bokeh quality is nice with a smooth rendering of out of focus areas and quite circular bokeh toward the center of the frame before displaying some more “cat’s eye” type deformation toward the extreme edges.

Close focus example of Canon RF 28mm F2.8 @ F2.8 on my EOS R

At close focus, the contrast in areas with more extreme highlights reveal more spherical aberration which helps to soften the transition zones but robs detail near the point of focus. Compared to shots with the focus point deeper in the frame, these close focus shots come off quite a bit softer and “dreamier” with a rendering more akin to a vintage lens at points just past the point of focus. However compared to vintage lenses the point of focus shows generally better contrast and resolution as can be seen in the example above, the point of focus in the image of the beer glass is where the bubbles at the top edge that meet the layer of foam. Overall distortion is well controlled thanks to the automatic correction, at the point of focus there is only a minimal amount of field curvature and perspective distortion that is not distracting even at close focus distances.

The 28mm focal length makes useful for more dramatic exaggerations in perspective of everyday shots. Flare is well controlled thanks to the evolution of Super Spectra Coating which keeps even opportunities for large flares from large sources under control and prevents veiling glare from destroying overall global contrast in the images with bright sources in frame. However with brighter large sources there is still some loss of contrast to be expected, thankfully there is no ugly flare artifacts introduced that would further distract from images like the ones below.

For such a tiny pancake form-factor this little lens delivers a pleasant shooting experience with images that look good and punch above what is generally expected from such a compact package of optics. Overall the images are pleasing with a nice look straight out of camera which is great since it’s the kind of lens you can leave on your camera at all times and generally be pretty happy with most of the images you capture with it. This is certainly a very easy “lens cap lens” for me and it encourages me to bring my camera with me more often when I’m out and about just because its so compact and lightweight while still having a usable stop of F2.8 and good performance wide open, in fact size-wise it just barely extends (without the lens cap) a millimeter or two past the handgrip on my EOS R.

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Canon nFD 135mm F2.0

Chase Hagen