I think I'm going to have to try re-rendering the file before troubleshooting this problem any more. I have been bouncing back and forth between two different computers for this project because this one doesn't have the RAM to handle rendering this file in Mental Ray any more - so I render on a different computer and I'm now wondering if settings on the other computer affected the render. I have some older still shots that were rendered on this computer that are much better quality overall.....thanks for everyone's input, hopefully when I take a closer look at the settings when I render again I will find the problem I had.

I appreciate your suggestions!