So frustrated just feel like packing the whole blooming lot in :(

Don’t give up, if you’re motivated enough that you’ll post in a forum in an attempt to learn, you’ll get it eventually. It’s good to see you’re at least trying to use your DSLR as a DSLR rather than a big point and shoot camera.

Lately I’ve seen all kinds of people dump piles of cash on DSLR cameras and expect that just because it’s big and expensive it will make stunning photographs a given. A guy I work with spent a few grand on DSLR gear and a few weeks later came to me bitching about how his camera is a piece of s&*t that won’t take good pictures, blah blah blah. I asked him to bring his camera into work so I could see it and within 30 seconds I determined it was set up to focus on the left most focus point, so any time he tried to focus on something in the center of his frame he was getting blurry shots. It’s not my place to judge where people spend their money, but I was a bit dumbfounded that he would spend thousands of dollars on the gear and not be able to figure this out on his own, after a few weeks of ownership. Perfect example of somebody who got duped by a salesman and should have just bought a $200 point and shoot camera.
 
Take a step back.
Learn about the exposure triangle and the relationship between aperture and depth of field.
Use DOFmaster.com to see how aperture and distance to subject affects DOF.

It takes a while to get good and a fancy camera doesn't speed things up much.
 
Where do you live? If you live close to portland OR I would be happy to meet for a day and do some shots. I have a 7D as well.
 
I doubt that a 30mm f/1.4 wide open looking at a RAW file would ever be "tack sharp" under any circumstances. No matter who you are or how good you are.

What people think of as super tack sharp is something that doesn't even really exist in nature usually. When you apply sharpening to a photo, you actually make dark areas on one side of an edge darker than reality and light areas on the light side lighter than reality. This is what your visual system does anyway, and having it in the photo helps you along a little bit. People have gotten used to it enough that even a perfectly sharp natural, RAW photo may not even look all that sharp by comparison, because the sharpening hasn't been applied yet.

Add on the fact that you're shooting wide open (lenses show more defects wide open which tend to soften, AND 1.4 is a razor thin depth of the 3-d scene being in focus) and you stand no chance of getting a super sharp looking photo like others will have who are showing your their jpegs (not unsharpened RAWs) at f/8.
 
Dont feel bad by the way. It's not uncommon at all for beginners to say to themselves "i just paid extra for this f/1.4 lens, so I'm damn well going to use it at f/1.4 all the time!"

And then you end up missing focus and getting blurry shots and end up all confused. Happens all the time. Using your lens with its aperture wide open is something you should only do if you have a good reason to do it. Like if you're doing an artsy portrait and you don't care if it's slightly blurry (sometimes that's even flattering) as long as you get the really creamy background. Or if you're in a really dark room. But if you don't need it, then don't use it - use a mroe common and normal f/5.6 or f/8.
 
Personally I really like the first shot. I like the composition, and although the DoF is too shallow and focus isn't dead on where you wanted it, just a tiny bit of post processing makes up for it. I wouldn't be too upset with that shot at all.


A quick bump in saturation, some brightness/contrast change and sharpening:

$Head & shoulders 3 sized.jpg
 

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