What went wrong

I was asked to take a picture today of a vintage snow machine give away. I went through all my settings and I should have been good

5DIII with 24-105 Lens
50mm Focal Distance
1/160 Sec
F/9.0

Single focal point on the guy with the green on his jacket

I just don't feel the shot is nearly as crisp as it could be. I know the bg is cluttered but they wanted the business name in the photo.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …thwoods_photo/8​574949039/

The lighting is a bit flat which wont help with detail but other than that I think it is acceptably sharp for the lighting and distance from the group.

How was this processed? Faces look a tad soft due to noise reduction maybe? You could run through Photoshop to sharpen the photo.

Seems okay to me for what it is...add some sharpening and call it good. Not like it's going to be a stellar shot anyway.

At work right now so I have LR but no Photoshop. As shot was a little over exposed so exposure and highlights both pulled down in LR. Also a bit of NR which kind of surprised me at that low an ISO I expected better from the 5DIII. Will apply sharpening in Photoshop tonight.

Shot on manual, did a couple of test shots and was happy. Was just finishing the actual shots when I realized the sun had gotten to a thinner section of cloud and I was over exposed.

Probably over thinking the image, I am really bad about nit-picking when it comes to my work.

Focus looks fine to me (at this size). Edited exposure looks decent as well. The weakest elements were the 1) posing 2) your ability to get all of the subjects to look in your direction.

looks good to me you just need some processing to do, I don't have PS I use gimp since I'm not a professional and don't want to spend $$$ on it, Yes i know I'm CHEAP :P

Just completed editing on two images. They look pretty good now. Have to say that I still prefer sharpening in PS as compared to LR. Also have better eye contact in these then the original image (especially the second one).

For a little back round info on these shots: The local snow mobile club bought this machine and completely rebuilt it. Then the Ford dealership pictured above painted it. It was then raffled off, the older couple in the front won it. That machine is a 1970's vintage.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …thwoods_photo/8​576395942/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …thwoods_photo/8​575300049/

the cropping seems more easy on the eyes, but you've lost the store name. Picture is sharp.

I would have placed the lucky winners on the seat of the skidoo, it would have dropped the row of standing people by two.

Those type of group shots are really hard to do nicely. Does the finished size have to be a specific size? Im wondering if you can crop out the whole right side, from close to the kids shoulder leaning against the pillar. and basically do the same thing on the left. that would hide the distracting elements from the sides at least and bring more attention to the people, snomobile, and sign.