Following a very busy May it was time to take a long overdue holiday in Spain with my wife and children. Although it’s supposed to be a time to unwind and relax, I always like to take a small amount of camera kit for two reasons. Firstly to snap away at my lively children for the family photo albums and secondly you never know what picture opportunities may arise. Unfamiliar surroundings along with a more relaxed frame of mind can get the old creative juices flowing. I tend to find myself photographing unusual, often random things, which I don't see back at home in England, such as showers in the middle of the beach; Photographing them does attract a few funny looks from time to time though! I try to keep kit to one camera body from my Nikon kit and two lenses covering the super-wide angles through to about 100mm. Any longer lenses would just be too heavy a load for a family holiday. An SB800 speed light is also essential when shooting in very high contrast conditions.

Even though I think Canon is excellent I’ve always stuck with Nikon as the build quality is excellent and I’ve a cupboard full of Nikon lens so a changeover would be quite an expensive process. To carry my kit when on holiday I use a small Lowepro rucksack with a dual purpose. The top half is a normal day bag ideal for pack lunches etc and the bottom half is a camera bag. Inexpensive and ideal for what I need. However, this year I did find myself getting tired of setting up my camera every time I wanted a quick family snap as I'm sure my wife and children did too!

Now the world of instamatic cameras (point and shoot types) has never crossed my mind before. As a professional photographer I’ve tended to have nothing to do with them until now. But after 18 days away on holiday and a few pointers from people, I decided to have a look at the market. My instinct was to look at the two big names in the SLR world: Canon and Nikon but found myself drawn to the Leica D-Lux 3. This is up there with the top of the range instamatics. It looks surprisingly similar to its film ancestors from the 1970s and has a cracking sharp lens, a pop up TTL flash and all the usual SLR shooting modes as well as a nice panoramic chip of 16x9 at 10.1 million pixels. The camera itself is a very stylish matt black and comes with a lovely old school, brown leather case. Only downside is the price; the camera and case come in at around £500. If you are after a cheaper version, Panasonic also produce some very similar cameras.

Leica D-Lux 3