at Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy.

Sony Cybershot F828

That's a good shot Nordlys, composition and colouring are wonderful

agreed , but cropping the dark right hand side a bit would , in my humble opinion , make it an even better picture.

On tripod, or hand held?

1/3sec at F2 is pushing the camera and your limits, if hand held....

Excellent shot.

What is the Sony like on noise levels?

A see you chose a rather slow 64ASA setting.

Hand held.

I did have a mini tripod and a monopod on that trip, but they didn't let me use it inside the Basilicas, let alone this close to the altar (mind you, they didn't let me use a monopod even in St. Peter's square outside St. Peter's Cathedral. )

Noise level of Sony Cybershot F828 ('2/3 sensor) isn't that bad compared to most point and shoots but nothing you can compare with dSLR let alone full-size sensor. Anything beyond ISO400 with that camera was pointless as far as I'm concerned. I wish I had my 5D when I was on that two weeks trip in Italy (with my Thai wife).

There might be a slight motion blur in this shot but I think the lack of sharpness is most probably due to the use of maximum aperture rather than slow shutter speed. Image stabilization was not an available feature on any compact cameras back then including prosumer models like F828.

I really held my breath to take these shots, using self timer (2 sec) most of the time. The boy in the foreground was not in the frame when I was composing this photo. He came into the frame after I pressed the shutter release (in self timer mode).

The boy adds a person touch which enhances the photo.