Why using in-camera sharpening?

After reading another thread concerning in camera sharpening on EOS 10D, I started thinking why is in-camera sharpening used? Does this camera produce soft images? Isn't it better to add sharpening during post production if needed?
Thanks for your answer.

Some in camera sharpening is needed on the 10D especially because of an advanced anti-aliasing filter which results in slightly soft images without any sharpening turned on.

As for why to apply in-camera and not at process time it is because the in-camera sharpening algorithms are able to produce good results with the most data, before any other processing is done. That being said any in-camera sharpening should always be kept very conservative so as not to over-sharpen the original; just enough to compensate for any loss of sharpness due to the camera itself.

I usually bring the original converted file into photoshop and do a mild unsharp mask at that point prior to re-sizing as well, the setting depends on the image but on the average at 200/.3/.2.

I'm a little puzzled by Greg's reply. I agree with his statement about the AA filter, but he then refers to "converted" images. This implies shooting raw format in which case there is no in-camera sharpening possible.

Regards,

Roger_Cavanagh wrote:I'm a little puzzled by Greg's reply. I agree with his statement about the AA filter, but he then refers to "converted" images. This implies shooting raw format in which case there is no in-camera sharpening possible.

Regards,

Roger, sorry for the confusion. Applying in-camera sharpening most certainly applies to RAW images. The only difference is that you can change the amount of sharpening prior to conversion. Perhaps what is confusing is that the sharpening is applied to the preview JPEG image in-camera and to the RAW image during the conversion process. This is independent of any sharpening that is done to the image after conversion using your image editing software.