The pictures from my Canon D-10 digital SLR seem soft. How can I corret the problem?

Saturday night, I was using my Canon D-10 with a Canon 24-105mm f/4.0L IS USM lens to photograph flowers and my 1970 Plymouth GTX using M settings around 7:00 p.m. c.s.t. Except for 2 or 3, the other pictures appeared soft. The camera's automatic focus system showed my subject matter to be in focus, however, when looking at the results on my computer, the pictures appeared soft. Printing the same pictures out on my H.P. 7960 printer, the pictures still looked soft. Any solutions to this problem or should I consider another camera or maybe a Nikon?

Forgot to mention, my camera was set on manual controls, ISO was 100, aperature was set at 22, tripod was used, and the camera's timer was being used, and JPEG was set at high fine. The time of day was just before dusk, still plenty of light. The two or three pitures that weren't soft were flowers. The GTX photos were all soft. The GTX has a black exterior, white vinyl top, and white tape stripe. This isn' the first time I've had soft pictures from the camera. So, hit and miss on soft or not soft, therefore, I've been very disappointed with the D-10. Thought the "L" series len would help, but the lens hasn't helped.

Mike's answer is along my line of thinking. At first I thought that you (or someone playing with your camera) may have also inadvertently changed the sharpness settings in the camera, but you said that 2 or 3 were okay, so this is not likely. Were the 2 or 3 that were okay more brightly lit? If so, Mike is most likely the best answer.

Are you using sRGB or Adobe RGB color space? The Adobe color space gives you more to work with, true, but all those subtle colors create a blur 鈥?it's microscopic but it's a blurring of the image. To some, this might appear "soft."

You can tap up the sharpness in your menu system, but be cautious in this action. Don't ruin your pictures.

It's better to use the unsharp mask in Photoshop. Start with small changes. By "small," I mean 50% sharpness, 1 pixel (maybe 0.5 pixels) and threshhold of zero. You can take these values to 100-150%, 1-3 pixels, and threshhold of 1-2 without making your pictures look terribly digitized.

Sure, after 4 years you'd like a new camera, but if that is not the source of your problem, it won't help anything. I bet it was the increasing ISO, decreasing depth of field, or increased camera shake caused by the lower light levels you encounterd later in the day.

Try a few flash photos and see if they are sharp.

i would consider getting a new one

try fiddling with the settings on the camera i have that camera and the same problem and now i talking nice pictures

Nikon and Canon are both excellent brands and I wouldn't get a new one just yet. Only as a last resort. Could be a setting on the camera. Look into that first or what you could do is use a photoshop program and just sharpen the photos to your liking manually there.

I would suggest starting with the resolution of the pictures where the small image may look in focus, but when you enlarge it the detail is lost. Normally, the depth of focus is enough to cover errors, but at 7 pm the light may be low enough depending on were you are in time zone (east edge of time zone is darker than west at same time).
You may be getting vibration while taking the picture, which will blur it. It has been a while since M settings crossed my plate - if that is shutter open as long as you hold it, then the camera must be tripod mounted or braced.
I would suggest getting a depth of field card (or making one by drawing lines on cardboard) or using a cyclone fence or brick wall instead and take pictures at an angle in various light levels using the same settings. If the depth of field of the lens is offset from the auto focus, when you focus at one spot, the grid will be sharp before or behind. Getting a new camera won't help if it vibration or hand held is blurring. The auto focus can't do anything if the camera is moving side to side. (Image stabilisation does that.)

is it the EOS 10d you own, i have that camera and have had no problems what so ever with it- Nikon are good and have great quality but dont give up on your canon yet.

If possible try taking some photos in RAW mode, instead of JPGs. This will remove all of the post processing which the camera does automatically when taking JPG images. This will at least tell you if the post processing is causing the softness.

Take a look here for info on RAW image format:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image

By the way, RAW images take up more space on your memory card.

Strange, the same thing happened to me the other day when I was taking shots of my Ferrarghini Lamborgado.

I'll bet it was the unicorn-skin seats that screwed up the exposure.