H44, The reason your friend's shots had everything in focus was because he had a small sensor camcorder that inherently has deeper DOF anyway.
Autofocus is not a solution to anything. The way autofocus works (in a nutshell) is the camera constantly sends out an infrared beam to what's in front of it, makes a decision on what it thinks you'd like to be in focus based on what's in the frame, calculates the distance to that object and sets the focus to that distance. It happens quite quickly so you don't notice it doing so.
Autofocus is hit and miss at best. The computer is doing all the decision-making, so if you want something else in focus, or a focus pull or anything along those lines, you're SOL.
As well, the computer is easily confused. It has no idea what's actually in your frame, so it makes decisions based on how bright something is and then how big something is. If there are objects of equal 'importance' or that the camera determines are of equal importance to be focussed on, or alternately no objects of importance that the camera can determine are important enough to focus on, the camera just gets confused and shifts focus back and forth between the objects, as if questioning you which one to focus on, yet not giving you an ability to choose one.
Manual focus is almost always better. The only time it's not is when you have a small handycam and the 'manual focus' consists of hitting + & - buttons to gradually throw focus nearer or farther.