35mm lens focus issues and 55-200mm reviews

Hi! I'm new to the forum I have a Nikon D5200 and really disliked the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my camera. It served it's purpose when I was a newbie last year. Recently I bought a 35mm f/1.8 lens and I LOVE it for portraits. I struggle with focus sometimes though. When there's more than one person in the photo I usually get one face crystal clear in focus, even with a smaller aperture at about 2.8 or 3ish. Yesterday at the advice of a photog friend I took photos of my kids playing outside at f/4 to practice. The pictures turned out fairly grainy when I zoom in, even though my ISO was only at about 250 max. It was as if NOTHING in those photos was crystal clear, even though it was at least balanced LOL. I'm never sure where to place my focus dot as well. When taking a close up portrait I breeze through it, focusing on one eye at f/1.8 and get great photos. Add another kid to the picture and I'm lost.

More recently I bought a Nikkor 55-200mm VR f/4-5.6 zoom lens. Thoughts on this? I wanted it so I can capture my kids laughing and playing without being intrusive where they then become stiff and awkward. How has everyone liked or disliked this lens? Suggestions for settings? Thanks in advance!!!!

You're using a short lens rather wide open. That makes it tricky to get the focus everywhere it's needed..

When I'm using the 50mm for similar shots, I often experience that same problem. In my case it's dogs but often their nose is sharp while the eyes not so much.

Are you shooting in JPG? If you are you probably need to adjust the Sharpness setting in the Picture Control menu. For whatever reason the default setting is bizarrely set at something like (-2) when it should be set to (+6) or (+7). Making this one adjustment will make a huge difference in the overall sharpness of your shots. Again, this assumes you are shooting JPG, not RAW.

To adjust the "Sharpness" setting:


Take some shots, see what you think...

....

Welcome to the forum!
I have the 55-300mm, and it is basically the same as your 55-200 - They are good lenses, but at the price they obviously have limits. For kids playing around outside, it will perform absolutely fine. For sharp images, try and stay away from the widest apertures - I try to stay around F8. I say "try" because they do need a decent amount of light.