Would the Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS make a noticeable improvement on this pic?

geepondy wrote:

I thought I had uploaded the full size image to the DP gallery? Here it is again, uploaded to my Picasa web album. It appears not to be the original size but I think you can download the original photo?

this one worked fine.

This looks like motion blur. The venue is not that dark, so a substantial amount of light will come from the stage lights, 1/60 f4 ISO 400, that will pick up extra light not just flash light.
You should try to increase shutter speed.

f the exposure compensation. Sometimes I think it tries too hard for that "HDR" look, hence the curtains were lightened considerably. The AF settings was set to center point but usually what I try to do is focus on a body and then recompose if necessary.

NetMage wrote:

It is hard to say anything about sharpness with the low resolution image in your post, but it appears pretty sharp to me, though it seems focused a bit closer than the main subject - how were your AF settings?

As far as perspective correction, you can do that with Elements or lots of other software, though I did this correction with PaintShop Photo Pro as it has the best tool for this, I think. You simply match a rectangular area to be straightened, and the whole picture is adjusted so that rectangle appears parallel to the picture edges. It can cause your image to become softer, but again it is hard to see at this resolution.

I also darkened/saturated the image some, as it seemed to me to have too much flash, possibly caused by the dark curtain fooling the exposure calculation.

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