The Dom's tips for photographic success include:

Good Cameras - we use Nikon Digital Cameras, the present mob being pictured above.  The D200 is a robust fully functioned work horse, and is supported by the equally impressive slightly less functioned D80.  The latest addition is the new (March 2007) P5000 (with wide angle attachment) which will take over the restaurant photos and the building interior shots using Nikon's unique "best shot selector" setting.  All the cameras are 10 megapixel. 

Good Lenses - we have stuck with Nikkor because we think they are the best.  The 18-200 (with vibration reduction) is the workhorse and the 12-24 takes over the wide angle work for large buildings and small piazzas (hint- get the building you are interested in at the top or side of the composition to minimize parallax problems).  The 70-200 lens is just stunning - super fast silent focus and super fast optically because of the extra light it drags in, and ideal for everything from poppies to long distance views of cathedrals (but not for carrying around - it weighs over 2kg).  We also have a 2x booster insert for the latter.

Sunshine - particularly early morning (always the best if you can get up early enough!) or evening - no digital manipulation can simulate good sun lighting, and paradoxically the sun in southern Europe in Spring / Summer is too strong for really good photo light for much of the day.

Patience - if for example the sun is behind a cloud, then wait for it to appear again - this photo of Fonterutoli and Siena came after a one hour wait for the pools of light to do the right thing - and of course there was no certainty that they were going to do this.

Profligancy - or whatever the right word is for taking lots and lots of photos - digital enables you to get statistics on your side

Original Quality - use the highest photo quality and size settings - to help in this the Dom uses mini disk drives which store up to 250GB of data.  Never delete the original photo file but work from a copy as you cannot go back to the original after processing.

Time - we spend a lot of time looking for interesting photos and then sorting them to find the best and putting these through the "Adobe Darkroom".

The following may also help (we have no commercial links with either)

123di is an excellent and comprehensive digital book on all aspects of digital photography - follow this link

We have successfully used Photo Rescue to retrieve photos "lost" after an accidental card reformat or camera / card malfunction - follow this link