I don't even bother with AF. It's not the speed of focusing it's just there's too much to focus on and 9 times out of 10 it grabs the wrong subject (like, say, a spot of salt creep on the glass that I *thought* I had cleaned up 5 minutes prior, but turns out I didn't
)
Wow, ISO 6400.
Didn't notice at first the stuff you edited in, so I'll edit in my responses.
The f/5 was my attempt to bump up the aperture in an attempt to widen the DOF. The wide open aperture gives a razor thin DOF which means the focus has to be 100.0% perfect not just 99.9% and .. well the odds of that are nil.
I am already standing back 2 or 3 feet, otherwise I would just be posting pictures of their eyes.
And Picasa is what I'm using. Because it's free. Which is about my budget.
I don't really like it very much. I had a package on my old PC but the motherboard is fried so I can't get at it. Forget what it was offhand but it was like a mini-photoshop. I should remember what it was because although it wasn't free it wasn't expensive either, so I could maybe just buy it again or something.
Thanks for the tips. Lots-o-stuff to learn here..