In using my 24-120mm over several days, I find that do have more shots that look “soft”. But most are sharp and plenty contrasty.
Once I started getting this feedback, I began to realize that I’ve been trying to push the lens past its limits. I try hand holding the lens zoomed out to 120mm and using shutter speeds of 1/4 second. It’s amazing how good some of these images actually are.
I also find that many images have shallower depth of field than I expect. I presume that it’s partly due to having been shooting with my 24mm for so long that I forget that at 80mm and f/5.6 the front and side of a tree trunk won’t both be in perfect focus. Moving up close with the 24 mm and it’s floating CRC element gives a different rendering regarding front to back focus.
So I need to be more conservative in what I ask the VR in the lens to do. And I need to gain an intuitive feel for DOF across the 5x zoom of the lens.