This is part of the EF 28mm Three Lens Comparison, check out how it compares.
The Canon EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM was released in 2012 and is one of the last EF lenses Canon have released. The success of the EOS R full-frame mirrorless bodies and R-mount lenses released in 2018 means that this will probably be the last EF-mount 28mm lens. This lens replaced the Canon EF 28mm f1.8 USM lens from 1995.
The Canon EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM designed for EOS digital full frame cameras and is fully compatible with all EOS film cameras. I have used this lens on an EOS 650 analog film SLR camera from 1987 and an EOS 5D DSLR camera and it works equally well on both. I love that EF lenses work on both analog and digital.
The EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM benefits from 15 years of design improvements from the EF 28mm f1.8 USM and 25 years over the EF 28mm f2.8 AFD lens, not the least being image stabilisation. It is however significantly more expensive in the used market.
Build and Handling
This fast 28mm f2.8 IS USM features an aspherical element, internal focussing, metal mount, and an ultra-sonic autofocus motor with full-time manual (FTM) focussing on all analog and digital Canon EOS bodies.
The front has 58mm filter threads which neither rotate nor extend making it easy to use with POL and variable ND filters.
Sharpness
This lens is part of the EF 28mm prime lens comparison, where all three Canon EF 28mm prime lenses are tested together. The sharpness images were made with a Canon EOS 5D on 100 ISO, processed in Canon Digital Photo Professional with lens corrections for chromatic aberration, peripheral illumination and distortion. Sharpness was set to level 3 (standard) and no adjustments were made to colour or exposure. The full frame images have been reduced from 4368 x 2912 pixels (12.8MB) to 1080×1920 pixels (2MB); centre and corner images are at full resolution but cropped to 1080×1920.
Comparison images for all apertures are shown below for completeness, but save yourself some time, you only need to see how the lens performs wide open f2.8 and at the optimum aperture.
The overall sharpness of this lens is very good across all apertures. results are so even that it’s only some slight softness the corners that differentiate whether the lens is wide open or stopped down.
The corner sharpness from this lens is extremely good, with some softness in the extreme corners wide open that quickly improves when stopped down, to f5.6 or f8 where it reaches the optimum.
Centre images are practically indistinguishable at any aperture.
Results
The EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM has the most even sharpness of all three EF 28mm lenses across the entire aperture range, including wide open.
It’s worth noting that the lens has significant rectilinear distortion, but this is corrected during post processing. I’d guess that the optical engineers chose to correct for other aberrations, knowing that distortion can be easily fixed digitally (as reasonable position IMHO) however for the few people that may want to use this lens on analog film cameras, the images look worse than the older 28mm lenses designed for film (where the designers needed to get distortion as correct as possible) .
Conclusion
I recently picked up the EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM specifically so I could compare it to the other 28mm primes: the EF 28mm f2.8 AFD and the EF 28mm f1.8 USM.
This lens has better image quality than all previous lenses. Its only down-side is the purchase cost which is two- or three-times that of the older 28mm lenses.
Canon EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM, EOS 5D 
Canon EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM, EOS 5D Canon EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM, EOS 5D 
Canon EOS 5D, EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM 
Canon EOS 5D, EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM