Tough first part to answer. As others have mentioned it depends on the purpose for shooting that day. After thinking about it a bit I will offer the following. On my first trip to the Forum in Rome I shot two film rolls of 24. Six years later after switching to a digital camera, I shot about 10x that number in about the same amount of time. As for keepers, I kept a greater percentage of the film shots since I already had them as prints. Once on digital, I printed fewer total pictures, but kept more that the 48 I had from the film shoot.
As for what do I like about digital, I think there are two related things. They are the ability to experiment at low cost along with the ability to go back to a photo and look at the EXIF data. In the film days one had to keep a notebook to write down the aperture, shutter speed and film speed (ASA at the time). If you were shooting B&W film you might also write down what color/type of filter you had on the camera as well. It's great not to have to write it all down any longer.
As to what is not as nice: I have to agree with the comment about watching a print slowly take shape in the developer tray. I had not thought about that for a long time and how much excitement was involved in seeing the image appear on the white paper. The other thing is that our perception of what is a good photo has changed over the years (IMO). Great photos are still great photos, but with social media, the content (whose in the picture, what are they doing, etc.) seems to be what is most important these days. Regardless of focus, composition, and lighting, as long as the people are at least recognizable it's now a "Great pic! Love the photo!".
I don't know too much about either, but have used YN-602 for a while. According to http://www.lightingrumours.com/feature-guide-to-the-yongnuo-yn-622-for-canon-2672 ratio control is supported.
I shoot Canon myself, but I have a friend who shoots with a Nikon D7000 and the 70-200 f/2.8 Tamron. Her pictures are nice and sharp, but I think just a bit under exposed for my taste. It might be her post processing or the camera and lens combination. I have shot a few pictures with her setup as well. I think the two work well together.
I have a T1i as well and have experienced a similar situation a couple of times. After checking all kinds of things (as have been mentioned in the thread) I took off the lens and reattached it again. At least twice this has worked for me.
If you cannot find the disk, I believe that the programs are available for download directly from Canon's website.
Primate gets my vote as well. Note the Primate also works with PS Elements, but not with Corel PSP.
For the last 5 years I have been doing photobutton pictures for the local high school Field Band and Winterguard groups. About 120 in FB and 90 in Winterguard (four teams). My practice is to use a green screen most of the time, but it may vary depending on the year's uniform. I have found that blue works well also (I use a reversible blue and green popout (reflector-like). The blue also works well with the Eagle Scouts that I shoot as well since there is a fair amount of green in the Scout uniform. After extracting the subject I place them on a background picture that is selected specifically for the theme of the year. This year, one of the team's theme used India based music and uniform, so I used one of my Taj Mahal photos as the background.
I have dealt with green/blue in the inner parts of the picture (think earrings, necklaces, merit badges, etc) by using two layers (easy since Primate does not work on a background layer so it needs to be duplicated anyway). After extracting the background color (as well as any matching colors in the areas you want to keep), you simply erase around the outer portions (typically the background) of the lower layer and then flatten when you are happy with the result. As long as your colored areas you want to keep are not right at the edges of the background, it works well and only takes a few seconds with a large hard-edged brush.
Place the subject well away from the screen (I like 8-10 ft) and uniform lighting is important. I have also found that nice rim lighting also helps control reflective spill from the screen.
You could take a look at Presets Heaven. Lots of free ones available some of which are specifically for weddings. http://www.presetsheaven.com/
Since most of my macro work is done on a tripod, I haven't missed IS too much. For multi-second exposures, IS doesn't help me very much. I do like it when off the tripod with other lenses, however, and I'm sure I'd like it if I had it for handhelds.
My Tamron 90mm 2.8 works quie well with my 60D. I bought it used and have had a great deal of enjoyment using it since. It also makes a nice portrait lens as well.
I really like my 50mm F/1.8. Don't forget that there is no IS (image stabilization) with this lens, so a bit more care in managing the shutter speed may be in order. I ran comparisons on this lens and my kit 18-55 in terms of "perceived" sharpness. The 50mm was the clear winner in my book. Not too surprising for a prime lens over a zoom in the same basic build/price range.
Make your own?
http://www.diyphotography.net/homestudio/chaep-diy-muslin-photography-background
I have tried all of the Topaz filters. For me Adjust is number 1 and B&W is number 2. I also have Remask but use it only occasionally. I have other software that I like for other functions that Topaz covers.
I suspect that the full sized sensor on the 5D Mark II vs the cropped sensor of the 7D is at the heart of the discussion here. The 7D includes a 1.6x multiplier on a given lens due to its smaller sensor size. For wildlife pictures you can fill the frame more completely (for instance a 300mm lens on the 7D would fill the frame like a 480 mm lens on the 5D). The 5D has the advantage on the wide end (good for landscapes) since there is not crop factor involved. So to get the same frame filling on both cameras, a 7D would need to be about 18mm vs 28 mm for the 5D. Not too bad at that lens length, but if you want wider (say 20 mm on the 5D) the cost for a lens that would do 12.5 mm on the 7D goes up considerably.
I have been shooting primarily in RAW (Canon) for the last two years. I use Lightroom 3 to process CR2 files to DNG and do most of my editing in LR3, exporting to JPG as needed.
My experience is that when first switching to RAW format you might be somewhat disappointed with the way your pictures look, somewhat dull and soft. This is the nature of RAW. The camera doe not make any changes (or minimal changes) to the file. Most cameras will apply some pre-processing to the file in jpg. For example, sharpen, white balance, saturation & contrast boosts to make the picture "pop" right out of the camera. Raw doesn't do this. It takes some time to develop your style of RAW processing at your computer. There are various presets that you can use to mimic the presets in your camera and these may be useful at first.
The beauty of RAW is that if you change your mind about how to process a file, its a simple matter to either create a virtual copy (not space requirements in LR) and do something different with no loss in quality or reset back to the original settings. As long as you work in RAW changes are simple and you can always start at the original file without other processing applied (of course this depends on working with software that supports RAW fully).