This is Why You Spend $1500 on A Lens

My dad came by with his new tool.  He just got a Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM AF Telepohoto lens to go with his spiffing Canon DSLR.  It produces pretty cracking results

Here's a shot at 18mm showing what I saw all the way across the house where attended a party today.  The red arrow is pointing to a water bottle. Don't bother clicking to enlarge this one; you can't see the bottle at all at 18mm focal length.

This is the entire frame captured through the fancy-dancy 300mm.

Nothing new, right?  I mean, after all it is 300mm.  Of course it's zoomed in very close.  Your point-and-click can get you this frame.  But the $1300 difference between your camera and this lens (which rides on another $1000+ camera) is the details.  Go ahead and click this one to see it full size.  This is a 100% crop from the above zoomed-in shot.

That right there is crazy.  Most cameras can't even make a shot this crisp by getting right up on it in Macro mode, and this thing did it handheld with a flash all the way across a house!  This is about as detailed as my testing got, and it really wowed me.  If you shoot sports or flowers or whatever, this would be a really great addition to your (increasingly heavy) camera bag.