Help with Noisy/Soft Image

[becsmay20]

I find I struggle with focus more when I am not using off-camera flash. I own a Canon Rebel T1i, and my go to lens is my Canon 24-105 with IS. Yesterday's shoot is a prime example of the struggle I regularly have.

Here's yesterday's scenario. Bright, 2 o'clock sun. I opted to use ambient light only as it was cold out and I didn't want to battle my batteries for the flash. My manual camera settings: f8, 1/125, ISO 200, 32mm on my 24-105 zoom lens. When zoomed in at 100%, my photo is not tack sharp. It almost looks a little grainy. I suspect it's not actually noise, but a slightly out of focus picture. Every shot I took in this scenario has this problem. I'm baffled. My focus is on the back of my camera, and I'm using one shot focus in non-action pictures. I did not take any of the photos until I heard the friendly focus beep. (Focused using center focus point. Noise is all over the picture, so it doesn't really resemble "missing" my focus.) I do know my camera struggles to focus in back-lighting scenarios, so I had an assistant hold a scrim over my head to help block the flare I had coming in--none of the pictures have any flare issues.

Any guesses as to what my problem is? Is it a focusing issue with the Rebel itself? Problem with back-lighting? Am I actually looking at noise when I'm down at ISO 200?

[Tito87]

Welcome to DPS. I couldn't see the noise--maybe it's my tired-old eyes. You're right the picture doesn't look sharp, but I don't know if it's a problem with your camera, or your lens: I'm not familiar with either one. What was your focus point?

[metoo]

To me it looks like a lighting problem. The lighting is so harsh (the snow is really blown out)the people almost look under exposed. If you really want a nice family shot then I would try redoing it in the evening. If it was an impromptu thing I would try facing the people in different directions next time. It might help, with the snow I don't know.
I shoot almost exclusively with available light. A lot of times it's not in ideal conditions either. One thing that really helped me was an article (or it might have been a video) the illustrated how to move around your subject or have your subject turn around until you get the light at the most ideal angle. I pay a lot more attention to the direction of the light now and it has helped a ton. I wish I had a link to it still, try googling around.