John - Pa. wrote:
[...]sharper and more distracting than I wanted.

The thing I found most interesting was that in a couple of cases, a
larger stop produced a better image than a smaller on. For example,
this f5.6 was noticeably clearer than the f7.1 shot. I'm not sure why
that would be.

JD



The smaller stop's larger "depth of field" means there is a larger
region where the light rays _almost_ focus, which shows up as a slight
fuzziness. It's this "almost focus" that produces the illusion of larger
depth of field, BTW.

HTH