Thanks paulc and Conan. I know all about RAW v JPEG bit and I now shoot 99% JPEG because what comes out of the camera is better. If, as is suggested elsewhere, the EOS20 is designed to produce "soft" images it means that when you apply USM (or a special EOS20 CSPro plug-in for CS2 in my case) you are surely attempting to add, or manipulate what is not there to start with? My brain says you should start with lots information you may not want and can then remove it (I derive this from my radio training which says it's a waste of time having an amplifier near the radio rather than at the aerial as it can't amplify what's been lost in the cable). If I take a pic on a tripod with my EOS20, then another with my wife's Sony credit-card size 7MP camera, or my old Fuji 9600 zoom the difference can be seen immediately - two the pictures leap out and smack you in the eye and the Canon is dull and uninteresting. Incidentally I've now set the Canon to sharpen and apply more vivid colours and more contrast but it still doesn't satisfy me. Take a look at any picture on
http://www.planepictures.net/ then look at my pics from the link above. The pics on PP seem to be smooth yet razor-sharp at the same time so what are they doing that I'm not? I've had many pictures rejected by PP for being too fuzzy or out of focus!! Is it possible that all the photographers on PP are spending ages sharpening their pics?
If I wasn't an OAP I'd dump the Canon gear and go for Nikon as I've seen some very, very good pics from Nikon - particularly from my son's 4500, which he uses for Astro photography.