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

As mentioned previously flash is pretty much a requirement, although you don't always use it, and natural light gives better images, However often you are shooting in subdued morning light, or just plain against the light.

I've been trying a variety of lens combinations, and after a couple of days I settled on the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 on EOS5D for most work with a wide angle zoom, 16-35mm f2.8 fitted to an EOS20D for overall scene shots. The 70-200mm is a stellar performer from a usability point of view. Autofocus is fast and IS has allowed me to go down to 1/60th of a second. All the following shots were taken with the 70-200mm

You can easily get closeups like this, and for full length shots you can move away from the crowd and pick them off without having to barge people out of the way

I brought a tripod but only used it for scenic shots. I find that for the best shots you need to move around quite quickly, looking for the right background as much as the right angle, so tripod is inhibiting however here, with the early morning light, it was handy to have

This last example was taken once the sun was well up so flash is not required and the lighting is much better.