Your suffering from DSLR DOF reality. Did you shoot that group portrait at f8 or higher. My guess is you didn't. If you did, your shutter speed wasn't any better than 1/50th. That would suck. SLRs have a very shallow depth of field at apertures of f8 and less. Point and shoot compact cameras have much smaller sensors andmuch closer lens to focal plane distance. They obtain a much better depth of thing in focus than large format DSLRs. The trick is to know how to manipulate it. The general rule is to focus on what's up front and the rest will take care of it's self. Or in a group portrait, focus on the subject in-between and pray like hell you get the closests and the farthest in acceptable focus. When in doubt, print a 5 x7. You'll be suprised how sharp everything is. And use a good sharpening algorithim. Irfanview does a really good job. Try 75%. or reduce to 800 wide at 25%. Post processing is very important.


Excuse me if I'm being to bold here.........