OK I just purchased a second hand EOS 1Ds and a 24-105 L series f/4 lens
apparently a top of range lens

Initial shots showed that image sharpness and is disappointingly poor .
Hand held and with tripod

...so I compared it to the little compact Pentax W10

Images were shot side by side

Cropped and/or Magnified for inspection
W10 IMAGES ARE NOTICEABLY SHARPER and colour balance far more accurate.
This seems surprising and very disappointing
when you consider the massive difference in price and place in the market.

I am only shooting JPEGS at this stage as I haven't started to learn RAW manipulation.


I'm not sure if the gear is faulty or simply the difference in 3yrs technology
W10 being later model
Or the photographer has something BIG to learn
Any clues out there ?

If it is second hand make suure all custom functions are off.

Also, check which mode you are shooting in, Jpeg, Raw, etc.

Raw will give you a photograph without any adjustments performed by the camera.

I have a 1DMKII and the images are softer when out of the camera, this is to limit noise, but a slight bit of sharpening in photoshop brings it up. This might be the same with your 1Ds.

........there are also several settings for Jpeg, from low to high, high will give you the best image, but takes up more card space

And check that the autofocus button is "on" on the lens.


JD

Sharpness setting for JPEGs is set, if I remember correctly (it's been a number of years since I had my old 1Ds) in the Canon software. The Pentax gives you a fixed sharpening, which, since it's an amateur camera, is set fairly high. The 1Ds gives the ability to raise or lower sharpening. Believe me, the 1Ds should blow the doors off the Pentax. If not, it needs repair/adjustment.

Nemo

Rule number one: If you want any meaningful feedback regarding image quality problems, post samples. Without them, all we can give you is guesses.

I'd say the most likely cause of the problem is user error. I have over 50,000 frames on my 1Ds...