Bad to be "Faithful" (also soft 24-70L)

After four months of frustration, I finally figured out why my images off 24-70L was soft. I made a bad assumption awhile ago, thinking that full-resolution @ fine quality would yield "pretty good" images. I thought the overhead of shooting RAW (i.e. post processing) is probably not worthwhile.

In addition, I opted to use the "Faithful" picture style mode, as the manual indicated that it will result in images closest to the actual (RAW?) image. (said "0" sharpening)

Well, I was wrong!

I took some "battery test" shots a few weeks back, in both RAW and JPEG fine. Looking at the JPEG images, I was quite displeased about the 100% crops. Texts were blurred and things were just soft all over. But this time, for whatever the reason, I decided to take a peep at the RAW versions, and voila - those same images were VERY SHARP!

I feel pretty silly to have been blaming my lens for the poor image quality; I just didn't expect that the quality of 30D's RAW->JPEG conversion would ever be that low. I then switched to "Standard" (i.e. some sharpening), then JPEGs looked better, but still no comparison to the RAW versions.

Lesson learned: When Canon says Picture _STYLE_, something else must be going on aside from Faithful not having any sharpening. If you look at 100% crops, they're definitely more blurry. Always shoot in RAW!

I thought I was being all smart by changing the Picture Style setting, and also "saving time" by shooting in JPEG. This will go down as one of the dumbest things that I've ever done in my life. I thought I'd share my experience with you all, in case there are others out there wondering why their images are so soft!

huh - I don't think I've ever had an unedited RAW picture that was noticeably sharper than an unedited JPEG. Perhaps your JPEG compression/quality was tweaked with?

which is why I shoot in RAW,

Why not just play with the picture styles, and see how they vary, and if you find one you like than carry on using Large JPGS, though I think you will find most on these forums use RAW and edit, save the original, and save the edit as something else.
editing does not take long for that great shot you really like, and just build a work flow t oconvert all raws to a jpg if you want a load just printed out.

If you post in the RAW and PP forums and ask what is best way etc. generally a few will help you out or point you in a web link direction tutorial

If you get Lightroom, you can shoot RAW and do all your PPing in one program, darn easy to use and great results!

the difference in quality between raw and jpeg was most noticeable, when the picture has very complex shapes.
for example, trees and forest.
a lot of fine details lost in conversion and lossy compression.