Canon FD 28mm f2.8 - Lens review

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 Since 2018, when I borrowed the Canon FD 100mm2.8 and the 24mm 2.8 from a friend of mine, I have been looking for some FDs of my own. In the late spring of 2019 I was at a local flea market and I stumbled upon a canon FTb QL with an FD 28mm f2.8 lens on it. It looked and seemed to work fine, so I bought it for 35 euros, which is a fairly decent price for lens and camera.

 The body was apparently mechanically sound, I did clean it up, removing old dust and grime, and I wanted to eventually load a roll of film in it, but the light meter needed to be fixed and I ended up selling it to a collector.

Canon FD 28mm f2.8
 Anyway, it wasn’t the camera I was after, but the lens because, again, if you remember, if you've already watched the older reviews, I’ve come to really like Canon FD lenses, as they are compact, lightweight, well-built and produce really good images.

 As all Canon nFDs, the body of the lens is made of hard plastic and it weights more or less 160 grams. As I said, very lightweight. It is 42mm long when focused to infinity and 47 when extended, with a 52mm front.

 The iris has 5 rounded blades and the aperture goes from f2.8 to f22, plus the green “A” mark that indicated the auto aperture feature, which only works on compatible Canon analog bodies.

 The focusing ring is textured in the same hard plastic and turns 130 degrees.

Canon FD focal distance is 42mm, se they can be adapted to modern mirrorless cameras.


 This time, though, I was a little bit unlucky. I didn't had the chance to properly inspect the lens and when I got home I found out that it has some mould. I decided to try and disassemble it, to clean the internal elements and, well, it turned out pretty fine. The mould has not etched the glass and it is not affecting the image quality or the colors.

 I've been using this for a while now and I have to confirm once more that Canon FD lenses are good lenses the image quality of this little guy is really good, on par if not superior to some of my modern lenses.

 Let's be honest here, we can talk about image quality, build quality, colors, etc. all day of this lenses but at the end of the day there's not much to be talked about. FDs are good, clean, lenses and, yes, they may not have weird flares or swirly backgrounds, but they are just plain, solid lenses and that's why I like them.

 It took me more than a year to find one of these lenses in good conditions and I'm keeping my eyes wide open for more because, honestly, my idea right now is to try and build a kit with a few of these FD primes, but apparently they're not as common around here, so hopefully I'll find more; wish me good luck!

 As always, let me know your experience with this lens, if you have any question feel free to ask in the comments below and don’t forget to check the full video for all the samples.



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