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Raining Cats and Dogs today
I have only made a very few images with the brand new Canon RF 28mm f 2.8 STM pancake lens... because it is again - raining "cats and dogs" - and this weather seem to stay with us for quite some time...
Great optical performer
One thing I can already say: it is a great, tiny lens with big optical performance. Way, way better than the old Canon EF 28/1.8 USM lens - that is certain ! The contrast is night and day between those two, to be really honest. What also strikes me is, the high contrast already at wide open aperture ƒ 2.8
And that weird looking lens hood is, curiously, made out of metal. It makes the appearance of the lens really look.... quite different.
Small package !
An boy is it a small package; the Canon R6 camera mounted with the RF 28/2.8 pancake lens. More the smaller size of an OM System / Olympus OM-1 camera...
Very sharp lens !
When I use the lens at wide open aperture ƒ 2.8 - the lens is sharp and contrasty. I only noticed a slight drop in optical sharpness (again, at wide open aperture ) when you focus very close. Otherwise, the lens is very sharp all across the image, at all aperture (until diffraction starts to creep in if you stop down a lot, which is the law of physics).
Either this lens will turn into a cult lens, or into one of Canon's most bought lenses. The focal length of 28 mm - being a moderate wide angle - is simple wonderful and highly useful in so many ways.
So, I can only highly recommend it.
And yes, buy the lens hood, too - so that you don't get too much stray light into your images degrading the otherwise so fine optical performance and high contrast.
No colored corners
Pancake wide angle lenses have a tendency to create colored borders, shifting towards cyan a little bit - and some do it quite a bit. This can be clearly observed in the Laowa 10 mm f 2.0 lens for example, or when you use Leica M lenses on Sony sensor cameras - but also on Leica M cameras if the lens is not coded nor corrected, and of wideangle design. I remember that the Zeiss ZM T* 21mm f 2.8 was extreme cyan-greenish in the corners without correction.
This has something to do with in what angle the light hits the sensor. If the angle is too large, it creates colorations anddarner than normal corners - which without correction is highly disturbing (plain ugly in fact). A good example to spot this behviour is in evenly lit cloud images, or any other evently lit large surface, wall, or background without dominating colors.
The Canon RF 28/2.8 STM has no tendency of that. YES IT DOES !
There is a light hint of colored borders after all ! Especially when you enhance the contrast, making it stronger - it comes to the fore. It is after all, a typical pancake lens...
Not perfect, but considerably better optical pancake design.
It ain't a perfect lens, got HUGE amounts of vignetting - unusually strong (which often is automatically corrected, though) - and lots of distortion which is automatically corrected, too. (The Leica Vario-Summilux 10-25/1.7 ASPH too, and so do most of the Olympus and Panasonic Leica lens...
It is... well, it is good and bad at the same time. But the corner sharpness is STILL better with the Canon 28/2.8 STM with that new lens design - compared to the crappy corner performance of another pancake lens, the RF 16/2.8 STM lens.
I wouldn't buy it personally ,even if i was tempted a little bit (low price, small size) - yet without the new weird butterfly shaped, plastic molded lens elements, the optical performance plus digital corrections stretching the corners particularly - are simply too much for my taste.
I may change my opinion - but I already have a 17/4 L Tilt-Shift lens, albeit bulky - it performs very well. And a manual Canon FD 20/2.8 - which is super soft wide open, but crispens up considerably at ƒ 4.0 and is very sharp at ƒ 5.6
So, I am not exactly lacking super wide angle lenses. Overall I am not a big fan of it anyway. Anything wider than 20 mm makes me... feel like a bad photographer *LOL* because I just don't seem to have a feeling for such wide lenses. 
Rain over large parts of Southern & Middle Sweden
There is a low pressure over over Southern Sweden, with many rain areas - now spiraling around, and then hit us again when the "tail" re-emerges back to Stockholm again.
And in a few days another big boy comes along - but this time, separating very warm air over Finland and Russia (up to 34°C), while we get the rain instead. Albeit briefly we may get north of Stockholm temperatures up to 27°C in a very small area, because a tiny portion of that warm air, might also affect our area - while mostly being cloudy or even overcast.
Photos in the rain tonight ?
So, quite interesting weather developing... the outlook is colder than normal, and more rain than normal. Tonight, I'll take the new Canon RF 28/2.8 lens with me to work, and see if there is anything "interesting" I can take images of...
Or perhaps after midnight on my way home... in the rain.
3 Aug 2023 at 14.15
Rain Records, July 2023
I read via SMHI that several stations got a new Rain records for the month of July 2023. One station inland, to the northeast of Gothenburg, got 303 mm ! Which was among the highest monthly amounts ever recorded. Also Gothenburg got large amounts of rain...
So: a chilly and rainy July 2023 up here
While over the continent, especially in Germany, the fear mongering went rampant: "the hottest July ever recorded in 120.000 years BULLSHIT headlines where made. The German, paid off media, is insane. The headlines get more stupid and beyond all common sense and reason...
In the mean while... the weather over Germany is considerably colder than normal now.
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