Mike_5D
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Pixelpuffin wrote:
I rarely ever venture beyond 5.6.
I’m usually at 2.8 or 4
Grab shots of family, evening shots, interior shots etc etc
I have no excuse, it’s my own fault entirely I bought it out of desperation thinking the smaller size would suit me and the RP better for traipsing around Portugal. Besides a dozen or so test shots the day it arrived, it’s not seen use since. Can’t be bothered with the hassle of selling and fending off scammers, so it’s been moth balled along with the rest of my brief introduction to the R system.
Having actually used the 24-105 STM, I'll say you can do more with a slow lens than you probably think. I haven't used it on a non-IBIS body, but IBIS only adds about a stop beyond what you can do with IS alone. This lens is f/4 at the wide end, so that's only a stop slower than big pro zooms. I think it hits f/7.1 at around 80mm. So there's lots of focal lengths where you're not at f/7.1. In daylight, there's no issue with f/7.1 unless you're trying to blow out the background. You can still blur the background at that aperture, but you'll have to be more careful about subject and background distances.
Calling it pathetic is hyperbole. It was a design decision which included a lot of factors including price, size and weight. I think it would be better to say the slow aperture at the long end is fine for some uses, less than ideal for others, and inappropriate for others. Looking through my Lightroom library for this lens, I find lots of daytime photos where I was happy to save the weight over a faster lens and the image quality was more than sufficient. As for nighttime/low light photos:
I also have fireworks shots stopped down from a tripod and handheld long exposures of carnival rides in motion. 0.5 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100. A faster lens would not have helped here but the IS sure did.
I have pictures from a local event in the evening and into the night. Posing humans can be easily shot at 1/60sec with a short burst to pick the best image, which I do anyway. I have shots of Santa on stage lighting the Christmas tree. 1/160sec, f/7.1, ISO 6400. I was in the dark but the stage lighting was better than expected.
I visited an exhibit at an indoor mall. Good lighting, but possibly fluorescent, so I shot at 1/125 sec just in case. f/4-5.6 mostly and ISO's usually under 1600. Yes, the shutter speed is a bit slow for kids, but quick bursts at 12 fps ensured plenty of sharp images.
I took it to the aquarium with the kids. This wasn't a photo-centric visit, but I wanted better than my phone. While the indoor spaces were super dark, the exhibits themselves were lit. 1/125 sec, f/6.3, ISO 16000 or 1/60 sec, f/7.1, ISO 6400 for example. Looks fine.
Most recently, I took it to Disneyland. 1/8 sec, f/7.1, ISO 5000, 85mm for example. The big lighting displays don't move. Sure I could have brought my EF 24-70 2.8 and gotten a cleaner image (not that the image I got was noisy) but then I wouldn't have had the whole subject in focus, probably couldn't have pulled off 1/8 sec with just IBIS and would have been less comfortable carrying around a lens and adapter weighing twice as much.
I'm not saying an f/7.1 lens can do everything. I would never use a lens this slow for indoor or night sports. No way. It wouldn't be my first choice for Christmas morning photos without a flash. I have better lenses for portraits. But there are so many subjects and situations where even a slow lens can still get the job done, even in less than ideal conditions. It just takes a bit of work to get the best out of it.
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They generally do their intended purpose well enough but really, for a high brow fotog? 
Seems like my EF 24-105 IS STM and similar will be used until unserviceable. Or maybe Canon will create some middle class RF lenses until then.