For me, this . More often then I like to admit .
Be it older glass (with auto focus issues ), older cheap cameras where the focus array is a bit misaligned, etc… I often mis focus in my shots by a hair.
‘sharpening’ is then a tool to try to fix issues . You see what you get , and you do an A-B (better/worse/better/worse) and I’ll take what i can get.
But if I do get good focus (more often then not on my cheaper CDAF m4/3 camera or my analog gear ) i don’t need to do anything.
I do think that there is this idea that an aliasing filter adds some blur , and they try to ‘remove’ that blur to get back to what in your head sounds more like a ‘ground truth’, how it should be. I start with something , something adds blur, I want to go back to before they blur . I understand the rational, if i care a lot is something else.
Another thing can be if you see very small details in your original high res image that you like and want to be noticeable in a downscaled version. You use some sort or sharpening to let details be visible they you noticed and liked in your original version. Again, i understand the rational. And I do use something like this most of the time.
I was also quite surprised with the amount of details still (clearly) noticeable in simple 35mm film negatives. No it’s not as contrasty as an high res digital shot, or they don’t stand out they much … but they are there.
Single hairs for example . Everytime I have a digital picture with an analog equivalent , I see some details in the digital one that are almost 1px wide and I think ‘no way this would be visible on the analog shot’. And then I look… Yes, there it is. It jumps out less, but the same detail is visible. And it actually ‘sits’ better in the surroundings often.
(Frizzy hair with a sunny backlight for example, the way the sunlight merges with strands of hair just looks fine straight out of the box from analog, where the digital shot would present something like 'wow look at that hair '. It all depends what you want as an end result )