OK, first thing is first: this is one of the strangest looking lenses I’ve ever seen. It has a shiny silver color, and when you zoom, the internal barrel extends about half a mile out of the body, leading one person to comment that my lens was getting excited whenever I zoomed in on creatures at the zoo.

So I just started telling people to make sure they didn’t look directly into the end of the barrel since the ultraviolet laser was invisible to the human eye. Most of the crowd moved back to a respectful distance and left me alone after that, except for one older lady with a PETA shirt on, who started making notes in a little notebook and muttering under her breath something about exposing animals to laser radiation.

Using it is a pleasure: It is sharper and focuses much faster than the Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 HSM OS for Sony and is light enough that hand-holding it for the whole day didn’t leave me tired. It is a great all-purpose telephoto lens that I recommend highly—better than the equivalent Canon and Nikon telephoto zooms.