I find photos taken with my macro lens are a lot sharper than with the kit lens which might be the same as yours The kit lens seems to work better indoors and when taking action shots of the dogs though.

I`m only a beginner myself so I could be on totally the wrong track but I have found shots I have taken on auto [ sports especially ] never come out as sharp as on manual where I have chosen the speed and light settings myself [ through considerable trial and error ], I have been using a Tamron 70-300 on a Nikon D40, I do use servo focus as I`m mainly panning on dogs doing agility and I have got fairly comfortable using servo for that but no matter how far out I might have manual settings while I`m adjusting for light/aperture/speed they are still usually better than standard auto for quality so perhaps have a play around with manual settings on yours and see how you get on ?
I know it can be scary trying mainly manual initially and can be demoralising at first as it seems like the settings will never come together just right but once you find the one`s giving the results you are after you, whether deliberately or luck [ in my case was luck when I was initially getting near to what I wanted, especially as I only found and properly understood how and why to change the aperture settings a couple of weeks ago ], you will probably never go back to full auto again

Patch, When you are saying you use manual settings do you mean that you are setting both the shutter speed and the aperture individually. If so how do you manage to adjust for the changing light conditions when shooting action?

To be in manual mode whilst shooting a field trial would be an absolute nightmare for me, what with dogs appearing out of shadow areas or standing in areas of sunlight shining though the trees. By the time I noticed that the metering was out by 2 or 3 stops and adjusted the aperture or shutter speed to compensate the dog would be gone and so would the opportunity.

I find using a handheld exposure meter with my Bronica (which has no meter so is truly manual) very time consuming and would be absolutely useless for action unless there was a constant light condition that did not vary, in which case one would set the shutter and aperture and leave as is for the rest of the shoot.

I use Shutter Priority (Tv on Canon) and set a shutter speed that I think is appropriate and then the camera's metering system adjusts the aperture to try and get the best exposure.

I would not think that letting the camera's metering play a part in the process of taking an image would make a difference when shooting action as against set up subjects indoors. But focusing could

Steve

Not really true Azz,

My 18-55mm is pin sharp Can you post up your setting and exapmle images so we can see for ourselves if you can post up one from the 18-55 and one from the macro?