Out with the new 70-300mm lens

Out with the new 70-300mm lens, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

I don't know what happened to my 25 year old Minolta 70-300 mm lens which I had been using last year. It just seems to have disappeared. With money burning a hole in my pockets, as they say, I decided to go with a state-of-the-art new (from 2008) 70-300 mm lens from Sony (SAL 70300g). It is a bit of a monster, dwarfing the SLT-A55 camera and it arrived on a beautiful sunny spring-like day, perfect for testing in our local park Frankendael. I had photographed these two on their nest but found them later wandering around one of the ponds. Didn't get too close to them as I wanted to capture this formation, so had this at 300mm. A pity about the reed sticking out to the right, but that is nature, I suppose.