I have the Canon 5D and it has the greatest dynamic range of any camera out there today. The 7 3/4 stops is a slight exaggeration but I have measured 7 1/4 myself. I’ve owned the Nikon D2X and D200 and the clean, smooth files of the 5D are head and shoulders over the two mentioned.
As far as sharpening, I don’t even consider it to be a capture process.
If you shoot RAW, there is no sharpening applied, regardless of your settings. I will apply a light “capture sharpen” when the file is converted and brought into PS. The capture sharpener on PK sharpener by Pixel Genius is excellent. Final sharpening is done later.
If you shoot jpeg, you might want to apply a light sharpening during capture, but the real sharpening occurs toward the end of you workflow, after the image has been re-sized for final output.