raven - can you post the EXIF data? The 2nd pic in particular looks OOF, and i'm thinking it's motion blur not softness. It's also tough to see what point the camera picked up the focus. you have a few objects in the pic, foreground and background, and they're far away from each other, so getting everything in focus is almost impossible. Also, if you used a slow shutter and low aperture (2.8?) the DOF will be very shallow, resulting in OOF areas, i.e. the bokeh will be big.

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