< Back to the Photography Museum Lenses: Canon EF-M Mount
Canon EF-M 28mm ƒ/3.5 Macro IS STM
The Canon EF-M 28mm ƒ/3.5 Macro IS STM lens is a compact macro lens with several interesting features. The collapsible design has two selectable focus ranges: infinity to 0.7x, and Super Macro which goes from 0.7x to 1.2x. To counteract the issue of lighting with such a short working distance, the lens has a built-in camera-powered selectable ring light. A screw on “lens hood” covers the ring light in storage. With the hood removed, the front element has chamfered outer edges to allow as much light as possible to reach a close subject.
For a dedicated macro lens, I generally prefer a short telephoto focal length as this gives more working distance. On the other hand I do like the look of wide-angle extreme close-ups.
As is usual with macros, this lens is quite sharp shooting at the minimum focusing distance all the way thru to infinity. That makes it a decent general purpose walk-around prime, though it has a relatively small maximum aperture. For general use I prefer the compact EF-M 22mm ƒ/2 STM or the very fast EF-M 32mm ƒ/1.4 STM, though neither of these are image stabilized.
This lens was released in June, 2016, but I didn’t buy my copy until January, 2020.
I haven’t used this lens as much as I would like, but I have been pleased with the images I have captured with it.
The first image below, Sugar Crystals, is a focus stack of 12 shots. The second image is one of ten frames from a focus stack set—the third image, Salt Crystals, which shows how depth of focus can be increased by stacking multiple focus-bracketed exposures.
Samples
Springer Photo Graphics 