Eyeballs needed. Softness from focus or limits of P14-45?

[dancebert]

Between my 60 year old eyes and a laptop screen I'd like some second opinions on what caused the softness in this image. To aid description, below is a TINY version. Download links to unresized jpgs below.

Smallest AF box used, placed on the shank at A. No other anchor parts were in the AF box. Seems to me A is in focus, the enter length of the stock (C) might be in focus, and the visible edges of the closest palm (B) are slightly out of focus.

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ISO 200. 1/1250 at f7.1. 28mm. IS Auto

Processed in Darktable. Unresized, cropped jpgs, at 99% quality, from RAWs. First has no processing beyond jpg transform. The second has default base curve and sharpen for the camera & lens combo, an em10 with P14-45.

https://app.box.com/s/zqu1qu0cg7g6kyw45sob

https://app.box.com/s/feb5x25nj33pgtknec7s

 

[biomed]

None of the anchor looks to be really sharp to my eyes. I have used the 14-45 quite a bit. It produces images that are quite sharp. I opened your photo in Photoshop and applied the unsharp mask. It improves the overall sharpness but not to the point I think you are looking for. The sharpest area seems to be A. After sharpening in Photoshop the rust spots on the shank stand out a bit more and the rest of the image looks a bit soft.

 

[dancebert]

I tried a different approach. Dialed up the contrast, then the local contrast in Darktable and finished with a multi-step sharpening in GIMP. It wasn't extreme, just enough to make the sand texture stand out. Looking at the sand in a vertical line from top to bottom of photo, it clearly goes from focus blur to in focus to focus blur. The middle of the horizontal band of in focus sand contains where the the rightmost part of the anchor penetrates the sand.

Given my POV, distance to subject and the dimensions of the anchor, the shank ('A' in the first photo) was the same distance from the camera as the band of sand. I conclude 'A' is in focus. I think the image softness is partially because of the combination of lens & sensor characteristics, and partially because neither wet sand nor curved stainless steel which has been polished by countless uses in rough sand will look sharp in anything but a macro shot.