use strict;
use warnings;

# run on Windows 10 Home Edition

my $file ='COVID19-Death02Apr.jpg'; # any big file

open my $fh, '<', $file or die "$!";
binmode $fh;

my $data;
my $num_read = read ($fh, $data, 3*8192);

print $num_read;  # 24576  just fine!

__END__
open my $fh, '<', $file or die "$!";
binmode $fh;

This following open method means exactly the same as above:
open my $fh, '<:raw', $file or die "$!";