Is sift a good way to extract features from an image?
What you are supposed to do when matching a template to an image using sift is to run sift against your template and then look for those sift features in that arrangement in your scene.

Rule of thumb: Compare like to like.

Sift(Template) Contained Within Sift(Image)

You cannot tune Sift to extract the "features you want" Sift *uses invariant measures to find features that it believes are most salient. (*Chris A)

If you want it to find particular features from your template make smaller templates of those features and search for them.

Just a suggestion. I do not know exactly what type of template you are trying to fit to what type of scene or image.