sunrise - whats going on here?

I took this sunrise picture along with a bunch of others. As you might guess, I was trying to get the cathedral in front of the sun. What I dont understand is why the part in front of the sun looks good, everything else is horribly blurry/out of focus. How could this be? Its not like its a different distance from the camera. Also, if you look at the other pictures I took, the cathedral is usually pretty sharp, but when the sun gets behind it, the part that is in front of the sun is blurry. If that part is sharp, the rest of the picture is blurry like this one. Whats going on here? Is it possible to take a picture where both the part in front of the sun and the part that arent are both sharp? I also get a "ghost" sun on some of these - can anything be done about that?

Hey pgmark, welcome to the board.
Your question is a little confusing, could you post some images of both ways your talking about?
Also some info, Are you using a tripod? Hand holding? Not sure what your trying to do, just get the part of the cathedral that is in the sun, or the whole cathedral.

I took these using a tripod, and as far as getting the cathedral in the sun, I'll pretty much take whatever I can get. I think the cathedral might be too big to get all of it in front of the sun, so I'll have to settle for part of it. Here is a shot that shows some detail in the part not in front of the sun but the part in front of the sun is fuzzy...

And here's one where I can get some pretty good detail, but the sun is really blurry/fuzzy/out of focus. Note though that there isnt much cathedral in front of the sun, so you cant really tell if its sharp or not. What I want is for the sun and the whole cathedral to be sharp and in focus. I dont understand why thats not happening.

What are the shot's parameters (ISO, shutter, f/stop, etc)?

I'm guessing that you've got so little light coming into the camera that there's just not enough detail in the non-silhouetted cathedral for the sensor to work with. Given the sharpness of the silhouetted tower, this obviously isn't an issue of lens focus. You're just working with a dark image.

Let more light in for a brighter, sharper image in-camera and darken it down in postprocessing.

But when you ask for help or advice on an image, it's essential that you provide detailed info about the shot. We're hard-pressed to tell you how to change the shot if we don't know how you got there in the first place.

Sorry about not providing more info. What can I say? Im new to this. The original image is 1/400 second at F4, ISO 80 and exposure bias of -2. The second picture is at 1/320 second and the third picture is at 1/200 second; all the other parameters are the same. I took a few the previous day without any exposure bias, but the sun came out as a mostly white ball - not much color, which is why I came back and shot these the next day. The detail on the others is consistently blurry. Without the color in the sun though, they arent anything special.

They are under exposed ! They need more light.

If I take a longer picture, will the sun still have its color or will it wash out like it did when I wasnt using any exposure bias?

it will still have color.