If you’re looking at standard zooms, you’ve probably noticed the choice between the 24-70mm f/2.8 and the 24-105mm f/4. The first is faster and sharper on paper, but there’s more to choosing a lens than just speed and sharpness.
Coming to you from Martin Castein, this thoughtful video digs into why the 24-105mm might make more sense for you than you think. In Canon's case, the lens is parfocal, which means once you’ve focused, you can zoom without having to refocus. That may not sound huge, but it changes the pace of a shoot. For example, you can frame a full-body portrait, zoom to a headshot, and keep shooting without breaking rhythm. When you’re working with a subject, flow matters more than technical details on a spec sheet. Constantly stopping to refocus interrupts the energy in the room, and that can affect the quality of your final images in a way sharpness never will.
The 24-105mm also gives you reach that the 24-70mm doesn’t, hitting focal lengths like 85mm and 105mm without changing glass. That extra stretch is right in the portrait sweet spot. You can sit in one place and let the lens handle the composition shifts for you. Keeping your distance steady locks in perspective across a series of shots. Instead of your images feeling mismatched, you get a consistent look even if you’re zooming in and out. For portrait work in a studio, that consistency matters. You’re not juggling lenses, and you’re not sacrificing time or attention on the technical side when your focus should be on the person in front of you.
Castein points out another aspect people miss: sharpness isn’t the holy grail for portraits. The 24-105mm is known to be softer than the 24-70mm, but softness can actually be an advantage. Ultra-crisp lenses often push photographers to add diffusion filters to cut down clinical detail and recover mood. A softer rendering out of the box can feel more natural for portraits. You don’t need every pore and line spelled out under harsh sharpness. What makes a portrait stand out is the atmosphere and expression, not micro-detail.
If you’re mainly shooting outdoors or chasing shallow depth of field, the 24-70mm f/2.8 might still win. The faster aperture helps in low light and adds stronger background blur. But if you’re carrying primes for that wide-aperture look anyway, the flexibility of the 24-105mm makes it hard to ignore. It’s about matching tools to purpose, not chasing specs for their own sake. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Castein.
8 Comments
Alex wrote:
"The 24-105mm is known to be softer than the 24-70mm, but softness can actually be an advantage. Ultra-crisp lenses often push photographers to add diffusion filters to cut down clinical detail and recover mood. A softer rendering out of the box can feel more natural for portraits. You don’t need every pore and line spelled out under harsh sharpness. What makes a portrait stand out is the atmosphere and expression, not micro-detail."
I agree, Alex.
At least I agree if we are speaking about portraits of Homo sapiens.
For other mammal species, and for birds, I find a portrait more pleasing if it shows the micro-detail in a sharp, crisply-rendered way.
I bought a Canon 24-105F4 when I first started my photography journey - easily 20 years ago. I still have it. It's survived three Canon DSLRs, one Canon mirrorless camera (adapted) and I'm using it now adapted to a Fuji X-H2. I've certainly bought other lenses in the intervening years, but that 24-105F4 has long been a mainstay in my bag for everything from nighttime long exposure to family portraits, to headshots. It's easily been the best investment in my photography life that I've ever made.
Les wrote:
"I bought a Canon 24-105F4 when I first started my photography journey - easily 20 years ago. I still have it."
We have that in common!
It was the first lens I bought when I got my first digital camera back in 2007. And I still have it and shoot with it from time to time.
in 2012 when I bought my then main camera, a Canon 60D, I bought the 24-105mm f4 with it and it more or less stayed on that camera for most of the time, then same on the 6Dmkii that replaced it...when I was shooting a lot of multicam video shoots I bought another 60D second hand and another 24-105mm f4 second hand...one has since gone west but one still gets used for both video and stills at times...I have the 24-70mm f2.8, 70-200mm f2.8, 16-35mm f2.8 and a couple of other lenses but for a convenient focal length range I still like the 24-105mm, so much so that when I bought my first (and only so far) mirrorless, a Fuji X-S10 I bought the 16-80mm f4 which has a similar range.
F4 lens is rubbish, no need to consider other features.
"Everyone", is a rather big category. Doubtful that I will be using it for my travel and street photography. But, each to his/her own !
Fairly commonly quoted as a great lens for street and travel, what do you prefer?
I love 24-105 for street. The versatility and unobtrusiveness are winners.
I appreciate that some like super wide, or even slightly fisheye perspectives, but for me 24 usually is wide enough for the scene to provide context for the subject. At the other end, it's not often that I wish I had a longer lens.
Of course, that's just me and my style. When I started out I purchased a 70-200 f/2.8 before I got the 24-105 and I used to use the big white lens for street photography. Not sniping either, just standing around with this large lens and taking normal photos - People seem to assume that you're shooting something else. When I got the 24-105, it opened up new avenues of expression and was so much lighter.
The 24-105 (Sony version in this case) is also not a bad lens for some types of wildlife photography (herpatology for example), though not a match for Sony's 70-200 f/4 (F/4 because it's macro and you're still going to stop down a fair bit).