I am reading the Exif details and thinking would a higher shutter speed at the lower Aperture (F4) on the first picture have helped ? Maybe bump the ISO up to say 400 ? Would this have resulted in a sharper picture ?

Apana, thanks for the tip on the aligning parallely ? One question i have is, though you mention stopping down the aperture may not help, there is a stark difference in sharpness between the two different aperture settings on the image (of course at the cost of the colors). Any views you can share with us on this ?

regards
Rajan