Thanks guys. Frank and Martin, you are absolutely correct about the focus, but in this case it was by design. I was going for a very soft focus as if to simulate walking around at night in a forest with a flashlight.
For the atmosphere, I increased the haze density to 10 and the fake dark power to 1. This combined with a very low (5 degree) sun position made the atmosphere and trees pretty much black. I then added a "flashlight" or lightsource at the camera position with a radius of 0.25, a strength of 100 and a very slight yellow tone. This gave the nice light and quick falloff of light that I wanted, just so you get the impression that it is a dense forest of trees, without being able to see too much detail of the trees in the background.
