There's nothing wrong with your panos... if the original shots were not sharp, your final would not be sharp...
And also, in Autostitch, u need to change the JPEG quality settings to the highest quality (I set mine to 75, I think max is 100) otherwise the final pano is downsampled and looks pixelated... maybe that's what u are referring to...
Agree with Sulhan that u need to use vertical perpsective when shooting using a wide angle zoom... otherwise the barrel distortion at the wide end will spoil the pano... I shoot at 17mm and usually each of my shots cover >50% of the previous shot... that works out to about 11 shots or more for a 180 degree pano... worth the effort cos u get really smooth and distortion free panos... see my gallery for some examples...
Shoot using manual mode.... just set the camera to aperture priority first and set the desired aperture. Usually I use f/16 on bright sunny day like in your two panos. Then meter the scene by depressing the shutter button halfway. Remember the shutter speed and aperture. Do it for the extreme left and right and then middle of the scene that u want to take as a pano. Add all the shutter speeds together and then take the average (if the three readings are different). Set that shutter speed plus f/16 (or whatever aperture u used earlier) when in the manual mode of your camera. Just start shooting at that setting... U will get even exposure for all shots regardless of how many u shoot... the software will have a much easier time stitching everything together...
