grain and blur in large group photos, help!

[creative expressions]

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t245/jenna762001/100cropgroup.jpg
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t245/jenna762001/fullversion.jpg

i dont know if i attatched the photo right but I hope you are able to view it. if you can, you will see my problem. i recently photographed a family of 11 and the first is a 100% crop of the raw version. the next is a resized full version. there has been no post processing on this image. it was shot at 1/160, f/11 and 400 ISO. where do i go wrong on these large group pictures??? for the smaller groups and close up shots at the same ISO i dont seem to have trouble. the images are crisp and clear. in these ones though the grain and clearness is awful. accckkk. im feeling quite discouraged as I was very anxious about doing this large group before hand (i typically do small children and families, some highschool seniors) and i feel like my nightmare is revealed as i am trying to turn these into marketable portraits. help please. if you have any suggestions for dealing with the post processing of images in this session and tips or help is greatly appreciated. i am feeling very discouraged right now. I have photoshop cs3.
thank you for any help.
jenna

[Gary_Evans]

You dont need iso 400. Your background is as sharp as the subjects, use 100 and a wider apeture.

The lower iso will help, not that you really have much too worry about - details that show on screen wont appear on a print due to printing processes

[creative expressions]

i appreciate your response.
what aperature would you suggest for a group? I was under the impression that it was neccessary to use a higher f stop....then in order to compensate i needed the 400 ISO. do yuo think it is possible to salvage these images? and how?

[RedHot]

It's hard to tell from the full image, but it appears the point of focus might be a couple feet infront of the people in the front row. This would be why the people seem soft because they might be out of or at the edge of the DOF. But 100% crop isn't a good way to judge a photo since the image would print fine since printing ends up 4 times smaller than a 100% crop on a computre screen.

The picture is also under exposed, probably because of all the white the people are wearing.

[howzitboy]

id adjust curves and use noise ninja on it so your happy. looks a bit under exposed, id have used flash and not shoot at f11. think you could have gotten away with f5.6 on this one.

[Tee Why]

It looks like a classic case of chroma noise from underexposure. I know you said no PP, but I hear in CS2, by default exposure correction is applied, thereby introducing noise from the shadows.

Could this have been the issue?

[gooble]

It's underexposed. ISO is too high. Aperture too small.

How far away were you? 8-10 feet? At 35mm focusing at 10 feet you'd have nearly a 4 foot DOF. Enough to get everyone in focus, plus you'd get a nice blur in the background.