I very often use these photinia as a lens test foreground subject, and I often shoot them in front of a mix of maple and fir trees as my background; by photographing in the afternoons, I can get out of focus HIGHLIGHTS in the background most easily,and by doing that I can easily see the shape and character of out of focus background highlights, and how different lenses portray those types of highlights. This lens does surprisingly well at handling this specific type of background highlights, especially considering that this is a real, all-glass,500mm lens (which costs $99 brand new).