Best way to get this in focus?

[Bsmooth]

Here is a typ example of a shot which I thought would be fairly easy to focus.It was taken with a 20D using a 18-55.It was taken at F7 at 1/500 shutter speed using only the center focus point with it directly in the cenetr of the leaf. Please let me know what you think. Thanks

[Aethyr]

I'd say take a step back from it and fill the center AF point with the leaf, since it looks pretty small, and then crop it accordingly.

[jfrancho]

Try f/11 to get a deeper DOF.

[Bsmooth]

It was actually about 3 inches in diameter and I tried 3 or 4 shots and they all came out the same as this one.

[raztazor]

I hope you don't mind but I've tweaked your image a bit using PS CS (I hope you don't think I've ruined it).

I noted that the leaf was taken on glistening snow and when I took a 2nd look at the image I realised it was a bit flat. I think this is normal with these lighting conditions.

Another point is that when an 8.2mp image is resized down to 900 pixels wide from 3504 pixels wide the image will become even softer (depending on resize routine)

Whenever I resize an image down in size I apply a tiny amount of unsharp mask.

For your image I manually adjusted the levels and then applied an unsharp mask of Amount 100%, Radius 0.3 and Threshold 0 and then I applied a 2nd unsharp mask (the haze cutter) of Amount 10%, Radius 100, Threshold 0.

I think it looks sharper now as it perhaps should do at these dimensions.