Richard, at the risk of hijacking the thread, I am posting one shot. But it will also help for Roy(the OP) to visualize why they even make lenses like the ones he is asking about. Fast lenses are also designed to perform in the most demanding of situations. To do that, apart from high quality glass and materials, they are highly weather-sealed.
In my shot, at a CycloXross event, you can see the heavy rain coming down, and I'm NOT under an umbrella either, I'm standing IN the rain. The very OOF (fuzzed out as you say) background has very smooth bokeh with no glaring circles. That completely isolates my subject. In spite of the dark conditions, the colors are still good, the pic is sharp and noise free. And that's with 30 feet of rain between me and the subject.
Stats: taken about 30 feet away with about 75% of the pixels cropped away to make it tight. ;-)
SS

That's really cool, quite the resume! I especially like how you turned the 6x10 to get cover shots. :-)

I can understand how those shots need to be sharp everywhere. I can imagine, for example, a picture of a laser in a lab. Even if the subject is clearly the laser, the engineers and scientists picking up the magazine will want to see everything in the picture. Perhaps the artistic side of photography is different than that, including the shallow DoF type of shot. And I shoot that to deny my scientific side. ;-)