Why f/2.8 Might Be Overrated for the Way You Actually Shoot

Two years with a lens and never a word about it, until now. The Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 rarely earns a spotlight, and that silence says more about camera culture than it does about the lens.

Walking the estuary town of Tynemouth at the mouth of the River Tyne, Jason Row makes the case for the Sony 24-105mm f/4 paired with his Sony a7R V. His argument starts with a common objection. It's old, it's not a G Master, it doesn't open to f/2.8. Row agrees with every criticism and then explains why none of it matters for the way he shoots. He doesn't need the extra stop, and he doesn't want to haul the weight of the holy trinity across a headland at sunrise.

The depth-of-field section is where the video earns its keep. Row points out that the f/2.8 advantage is only half the story, because depth of field depends on the distance between camera, subject, and background as much as aperture. By zooming to 105mm and stepping back from his subject, he compresses the background and gets separation that partly closes the gap on a faster 24-70mm. He demonstrates it on a flower at both 70mm and 105mm, wide open at f/4. For low light, he leans on modern noise reduction in tools like DxO PhotoLab and Lightroom, arguing that a single stop of extra noise is easily cleaned up in post.

There's a broader shift worth connecting here. Camera bodies have quietly absorbed a lot of the work that used to require expensive glass. In-body stabilization, high-resolution sensors like the 61 megapixels on the a7R V, and AI-driven denoising have moved the performance floor up so far that a mid-tier f/4 zoom now covers situations that once demanded a fast prime or a trinity zoom. Row's video is a practical example of that trend playing out in the field. If you're deciding between a G Master and an f/4 all-rounder, the honest question is how much of your buying decision is about output and how much is about the badge on the barrel. For travel, video, and long walking days, the lighter kit often wins on the images you actually come home with, because it's the lens still on the camera when the light turns good.

Row also digs into the lens as a video tool, which is where a few smart details show up. He maps the C3 button to APS-C crop mode, and in video that turns the 24-105mm into roughly a 24-160mm f/4, a genuinely useful range for pulling off compressed shots and transitions. He mentions the single stabilization mode, contrasts it with the two modes on his Sigma 100-400mm, and notes it's a touch heavy for gimbal work compared to the Tamron 20-40mm f/2.8 he bought for that job. His low-light companion, the Sony 85mm f/1.8, rounds out a kit he assembled specifically because he didn't have the money for a wall of G Masters. He also runs a five-image HDR bracket and floats the idea of an HDR panoramic, which he walks through in the footage.

The closing thought is one plenty of people quietly share but rarely say out loud. Specialist lenses have become a badge of honor across Sony and other systems, and Row questions whether most of us need them at all. He bought the Sigma over the Sony telephoto because it was cheaper, and he's blunt about budgets being tight for a lot of shooters. His point about sharpness lands the same way: if a print looks sharp edge to center at a decent size, pixel peeping is beside the point.

Watch the full walk through Tynemouth in the video above to see the 70mm-versus-105mm comparison and the HDR results for yourself.