Family Portraits - I'm doing something wrong

[jorgemafud]

Maybe try a smaller aperture, say, f/8 to f/11 and raise your ISO... regards!

JM

[love.trees]

Thanks for all the tips- here's an update:
Luke, I checked out the link you suggested and played around with it a bit. Very cool, thanks.
I did a test shoot on my daughter, mid afternoon, sunny day, at f/5.6, f/6.3, f/7.1 and f/8. The f/6.3 looked the best, clarity and focus were great on her and the playscape around her. I got about 2-3ft of focus.
Had a shoot this weekend, early morning, cold out, sun only up for a couple hours, and shot at f/8 and f/10. I was nervous I would screw up so I went smaller than tested. The results: everyone is in equal focus, BUT, only about 1/4 of the shots turned out to be perfectly clear, most of the shots being very noisy and unusable. I know some of this is camera shake- no big deal, that's why I take a lot. But in most of them, you can tell that's not the issue. I shot in aperture priority and auto ISO bc we were moving around, (shade,sunlight). Not sure if I just went too small, I though the camera would compensate I guess. So some images that would be great, individual eyelashes visible, etc are too noisy to use. I feel like a dummy bc I can't get this right.
Practice shoot was awesome, real thing was not. Go figure.
Thanks for all your help.
Also, I shot in evaluative metering. Thanks