Higher zoom from farther distance?
 

<<<-- Distance from the front of the lens to various items:

Penguin 22"
Blue box 33"
Red box 41.5"
Whiteboard 77.5"

Camera was set to F1.8 with shutter at 1/60 under the office lights. Zoomed in a bit to fill the frame and used manual focus to get the blue box as sharp as I could in the LCD using the nifty focus assist zoom feature.
-->>>

Phil, thanks for the excellent example.

I sure would like to see the results from a similar setup taken from a farther distance at much higher zoom.