Why aren't these photos sharp?

Gary Lindquist wrote in post #5278055
Christy, did you shoot these in RAW format?

I did, my first RAW effort ever. I did my editing in Lightroom, though - I think I am following what you're suggesting here and will give that a shot.

C2S wrote in post #5278057
This is probably a typo, and meant to be 17-50mm - but he did write it twice for the first two shots. Otherwise, I would have commented about superzooms having worse image quality compared to normal zooms, and especially when compared to primes.

Oops, that was indeed a typo, and has been fixed.

Anything far away will be affected by atmospheric haze, even if it is clear out. They also fill less of the frame, so less detail on them is resolved by the lens. The pictures look fine. You can't and shouldn't pixel peep that kind of shot.

perryge wrote in post #5278339
You can't and shouldn't pixel peep that kind of shot.

Agreed, there is far to much pixel peeping happening sometimes. You could try increasing the sharpening and contrast on these just a little bit to see if you like it. You may also try using a UV filter. I have a hard time believing that the air in Pittsburgh is ever really clear.

On a crop camera, any aperture smaller than f11 will start to introduce diffraction effects, which will cause the image to look OOF. Shooting at f20 and f22 will bring it out even more.

The large images look pretty sharp, considering they are 100%. But I didn't see any reference to sharpening. Did you do any post processing sharpening to them? I mean, outside of RAW? Sharpening in any RAW editor I have used is quite limp compared to what you can do in CS2 or 3 to a jpg though.