A few months ago I talked about shooting a family wedding and the logistical and management problems I encountered. I also came to a few conclusions about equipment and technical matters. Things that I would change if I did it again. Professionals won't find anything startling here, but someone in the same situation as me might find something useful.

I took quite a bit of equipment with me but I shot the whole thing using the following.

Canon EOS20D 17-85mm (34 shots)
Canon EOS5D all lenses (487 shots)
of which

• 16-35 F2.8L (125 shots)
• 24-70 F2.8L (309 shots)
• 70-200 F2.8L IS (52 shots)

This tells an interesting story. I took the EOS20D mainly as a backup, and in the end I didn't use it much. For example I didn't really use it as a second body - I preferred to change lenses on the EOS5D. When I did use it it was because I was running out of memory cards, but that's another story. In an ideal world I would take 2 EOS5D bodies. Why? I'm not sure, but I guess I found even the slight change in operation between the two a bit of a put-off, plus at the back of my mind I wanted all the images similar size/resolution. Maybe more a psychological thing this.

Assuming I had 2 EOS5D's, what lens combination would I use? Well I know that I put the 16-35 on the camera only to do group shots - so that didn't mean chopping and changing much - all of those were done in one or two continuous shoots. Quite a few of the group shots required wider than 24mm, although if possible I might have been better trying to use longer focal length in some to avoid distortion.

The 70-200mm was a different kettle of fish. I found I was often wanting to mount it because the 24-70mm wasn't quite long enough. I think now I know the attraction of the 24-105mm - it probably has just that extra amount of reach to avoid this.

However where I found the 70-200mm really useful was during the ceremony. I was allowed to shoot here as long as I remained at the back and was unobtrusive (no 600mm F4 then!). Here the lens worked very well, combination of handling, fast aperture and IS. I should say also that the EOS5D is a whole lot quieter than the EOS20D which sounds like a rifle shot in comparison.

The conclusion? 2 EOS5D's (or equivalent) with 16-35 and 24-105 would be my preferred set up if I did it again, with the 70-200mm for special shots.

In the next post I'll talk about some other technical and equipment issues (JPEG or RAW? Flash and tripods, memory cards and readers etc)

A friend just came back from the UK "Focus on Imaging" exhibition at Birmingham. This is the premier expo in the UK for photo suppliers. What did he find? Canon were conspicuous by their total absence, while Nikon had a giant stand. Go figure. Do Canon think they have the market sewn up?

Ok - we're going to put these two heavyweights in the ring and see who ends up on the bottom. We'll answer the questions they don't even dare ask on Dpreview. So, which of these cameras takes the best snaps?

Actually more to the point, which of these two buggers is heavier? Don't have my scales with me but it would not surpise me if it was the Leica, given that it's fashioned from a solid block of Thousand Year Reich steel, finished with brass counterweights. (woops sorry, the war finished 15 years before my Leica was made, but what the hell).

On a serious note the question is completely irrelevant of course. Here's my take on the digital vs. analogue debate.

1) Image quailty doesn't really figure in this if all you're interested in is sharp photos. For most photographic purposes the quality produced by 40 year old Leica glass, film, etc and 21st century computer/cameras is more than adequate.

2) Image character is different - I'm not going to get into the Leica-look debate, but there is something in it.

3) If you're taking photos at a football match, maybe leave the Leica at home

4) If you're taking candid shots in a quiet cafe, the Canon will make you look like someone with more camera than common sense, and might well arouse comments such as "don't point that fucking thing at me - asshole". With the M3 you are more likely to get "hey, is that a, you know, camera?"

Shucks - I've made my point - horses for courses. Of course I didn't talk about workflow.... maybe next time

Caffe Florian is one of Venice's institutions, or tourist rip-off depending on your point of view. Actually I rather like it. Peeling, gilded decadence - and that's just the customers.

At the moment it is also a meeting point and goldfish bowl for carnival goers. Great opportunities for candid shots. These were done in the evening using Canon EOS5D sometimes with flash. Autofocus gets easily confused with reflections, so these are not that pin sharp, and shot at 1600 ASA they also have a bit of digital graininess. So, I turned them into B&W. Still working on the hoof, so the conversions aren't too clever

On my other blog I have a few articles about cooking, and I've illustrated them with some photographs. However the pictures generally haven't been very good, but then I haven't spent much time on them.

For example, this one is just a plain shot of a plate, and despite the capability of the equipment (EOS5D 24-70 f2.8L) it's plainly a poor photo.

So a week or so later I decided to repeat the exercise and tried to get a more professional looking result using the same equipment.

First of all I presented the food in a more "artistic" fashion. I'd also looked at a few food photographs and noticed the general approach - isolating the main subject. So, I changed the viewpoint to allow me to shoot the subject against a plain background, and I shot at f2.8 for shallow DOF.

These simple changes result in a much better image. However there are still problems. The lighting wasn't ideal, so the main subject is in shadow. Also although the subject is nicely isolated, the DOF is too shallow, and it just looks out of focus. The problem is that this composition is essentially flat, but it has depth, so probably should have been shot with the lens stopped down a bit more.

By this time the subject matter was in my digestive system but next time I'm going to try and fix these issues.

NB. I'm not a product photographer so all of this is just a simple self discovery exercise, and not intended to be a serious tutorial. I'd be glad to hear from any experts out there