Paul, your comments have prompted me to evaluate my own camera settings in terms 'picture style', which I hasten to add have never been altered from the factory settings that came with the camera. The camera is set on User Def 1 which is Standard. I see that in fact the sharpening in Standard is set to 3 whilst Contrast, Col Sat and Tone are all at 0
Now if as we have discovered
these settings are applied to the Raw file, this is obviously the reason why my images seem to require little or no sharpening. I have no intention atm of altering these settings, and am happy to change things in the Raw converter, ACR in CS2.
If your camera came with the same factory settings as mine, I am suprised you have been a tad disappointed. I found the images from my 10D much inferior by comparison. The 20D was a big stepup in terms of image quality, though again I never altered parameters,always believing that they were never applied in Raw. Frankly, what you have discovered, has been somewhat of a revelation
though it matters little as I am more than happy with my results.
May I ask what glass you are using?