Panasonic 100-300 a good lens?

I'm never sure what the definition of soft is, can anybody explain. I think it's great shot.  I saved a copy (promise I'll throw it away) and given that the picture the we see here has alreeady been DPRd and resized, I was very impressed with how far I could crop and still have a nice shot.

With some idiot level processing using Picasa, it was very easy to give it more oomph.

To my eyes I see a picture that lacks a bit of contrast which could have been corrected in camera with a different exposure but I wouldn't mind betting that the picture here is what ekramer51 saw, not my fancy edited version.   With scrutiny I suppose it could be argued that a higher shutter speed could have been used to minimise motion blur which I might just be able to detect.  Once again though if that is a problem, that presumably doesn't indicate softrness just motion blur.

I'm not saying it's not soft, only that to my eyes it'sa good picture and if it is soft what is it about this picture that makes it describable as soft.

Thanks to ekramer51 for allowing me to discuss his/her picture.

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