While on holidays at Maroochydore over the past week, I took a number of photos of Point Cartwright with both my Nikon 55-300mm lens at 300mm, and also with my Sigma 105mm

now that I'm home, I'm finding that all my photos using the 55-300 seem to be rather soft focused, and I was getting better results from the Sigma.

I know that there is a difference between 300mm and 105mm, but I'm just wondering if the softness of the 300mm is a user error that I could correct through practice or changing what I do, or equipment limitation that I'll need to live with.

Here is an example:

Sigma at f/6.3, 1/250 s, ISO200 (105mm)

DSC_1074_00002 by John Blackburn, on Flickr

Nikon at f/5.6, 1/1250s, ISO100 (300mm)

DSC_0876_00001 by John Blackburn, on Flickr