I saved my pennies and got the Canon EOS 10D and I have noticed that the pictures are not as sharp as my Sony Cybershot 5.0 megapixel camera. They just seem slightly hazey. Do I need to exchange my camera or is this just a problem inherrent to this camera that the focus is not sharp?
All digital cameras produce inherently soft images; the difference between a consumer-level camera and a more pro model is that consumer-level cameras apply sharpening to images automatically, pro-level cameras leave this to the photographer. This requires more effort by the photographer, but allows the use of sharpening techniques that would be impractical to do in-camera.
Here is an unsharpened 100% crop from my 1Ds:
Here is the same image after sharpening:
The sharpening technique I used in this example is somewhat complex, (it involves upsizing with S-Spline Pro, converting to LAB color, masked USM on the L channel, and reducing back to original size) and could not be done in-camera. But it allows a greater degree of sharpening without creating image artifacts than any in-camera sharpening can do.