I'm not sure what you are looking for or what you want Andrew. Perhaps, you could be a bit more specific. If you want to know about film availability, I'm sure you can get whatever you need - from what I have seen, the UK isn't as anti-film as the US is. If you want to know about equipment, I would take whatever you are comfortable with shooting - a trip is not the time to get used to a new camera or new camera equipment.

I think the 28-105 will get you almost all of the pictures you'll need around the London area - and will give you better flexibility than just a 28mm fixed lens. I was there last summer and took almost all of my shots with a 24-70 lens. If you're interested - they are at

http://homepage.mac.com/andybrawer/PhotoAlbum14.html

There were a couple of shots that were taken with a longer lens - if you have one it wouldn't hurt to bring it, but you can definitely get buy without it.

thankyou for the reply. I should have re read the original post. My question was about trying to use a clasic olympus
with a mini dv cam as back up.Or take a modern 35mm along on the trip.

I have found on a number of trips that the smaller & less conspicuous the camera, the more photos you get that are "keepers".

In Europe, as well as Australia (love SA !) I used to take my Olympus OM-1 & several lenses. I had a little Olympus XA (photographic "hockey puck") 'for backup' which always wound up getting 90% of the pictures I took:

Short jaunt from the car? SLR too big to carry - get great pic of something unexpected. Long hike - the big camera is always in the way & gets heavy. Just wandering down the street in Arles, not wanting to look so much like a "tourist"? XA in pocket, gets the shots.

On two month-long trips to Australia, I wound up only exposing 3 rolls of film in the OM-1, all the rest with the XA. Exception was, I shot about a dozen rolls of Fujichrome Velvia of RT66, from Rockhampton, QLD, to Tennant Creek, NT for a magazine article on "Australia's RT66" that I never got around to writing. No point in it now that the highway has been re-designated as "A-2". A pity - I'd have thought it should have been exploited as RT66 given the interest in OZ and the USA about our RT66.

Virtually all those shots were "duplicates" of the print-film photos taken with the XA, and so doing gave me a comparison of the relative ease of use, AND the resulting pictures: no contest - I quit even taking the OM!

Then, along came Digital! Got a Nikon 990. Almost as big as the OM, but what results!! So, I started looking at small digital with similar features to the XA - read Shutterbug review of the Minolta Dimage X. Wow, so cool & SO tiny and no protruding lens, but 'only' 2 megapixils. Then came the Xi - 3mp, just like the Nikon. Took it to Tasmania for a month with just the XA for backup. Never touched the backup.

Got a Konica-Minolta X50 for it's infra-red capability & so my wife could use the Xi - took it to Tahiti, Pitcairn Island, Easter Island & Peru (Machu Picchu, lake Titicaca, & the north) all photos taken with the X50 & Xi, & all just fine! Never touched the XA back-up.

Only problem? Out foxed myself thinking ISO 400 might be good for grab-shots from a moving bus on the Altiplano, forgot & left setting @ ISO 400 & got some grainy shots before I thought to re-set ISO.

Used pictures from these tiny digitals for a family calendar: 12 x 18 photos, and they look great! Used PhotoShop Elements Image>Resize to re-sample @ 300 PPI.

This got me wondering: how do the old film slides compare? Did some scans of Kodachrome/Leica 50mm Elmar, & Ektachrome/ Fujica St701 50mm. Again: no contest, the 3MP digital wins! Presumably, I could get better scans at great price, but since the scans' biggest problem seems to be film grain, when printed @ 12 x 18 inches, why bother?

If I had it to do over, I might go for a bit more Megapixils for cropping, but that's all. I recently got my marathon running daughter a 6MP Pentax Optio WPi, and might decide to get myself one - waterproof & all!

As you may see elsewhere, my motto has become: "The camera you have WITH you, gets the picture". My tiny digital never leaves my side - need more than 3x zoom? Walk a few steps!

Exception? I do have Panasonic FZ4 12x zoom for bird-watching, but even this light-weight marvel is too big to carry all the time.

-Erik