Califfoto's Fotothing

Looks so out of place!

From a distance it could be one of 'Nessie's' relatives diving.

Never go yo the beach if you have a spare tire hanging out!
hahahaha!!

From the thumbnail< I thought it was nessie too, but now I can see itis not her.
About the softness: most lenses are not at their best at their limit (I hope I say this correcly, in this case at 300mm)

I agree. But I thought that applies mostly to the aperture rather than the focal length. Do you agree?

With a aperture of 5.6 you don't have a long DOF, so if the object is not quit in the point of focus, you can have some softness, that you wouldn't have if you used a aperture of 16 for example (greater/longer DOF)
You can make some test: make the same picture with different AV and different mm and than compare them with eachother. But on what I've read on the internet it is caused by the end of the zoom.

Thanks Elly for your help. I agree. In fact, I intentionally chose the biggest aperture to reduce the DOF, and get the blurry effect on the background.
I have also used the bracketing that you mentioned in the past and still got a soft (as opposed to sharp) image. I looked at some reviews on www.fredmiranda.com and it appears that the opticals with this lens are really soft. I tried a lens from the Canon L-series and got a much sharper image: http://califoto.my-expressions.com/archives/2186_1665899495/114534
with almost no distortion at F2.5.
I am, however, still puzzled as to the reason that this "softness" happens very randomly. My guess would be that the optimal range with this zoom remains very tight ...

discussions on Dutch boards tells that sometimes you can have bad luck to achieve not the best example of a lens.
but a lens from the L-range must do the job, and especially a prime will be hard to beat (and is very expensive)
A friend of mine uses the same lens as you, but he wants to buy a 300mm L F4 IS USM, with a converter, but one has to pay triple the price of your lens.....

Good catch...

Unique and woderful shot !!!!!!