How to render an image field What is the correct way to render a Drupal 7 image field and show the default image if the field is empty?

If I use field_get_items it will simply return FALSE when the field is empty.
I think best practice would probably be to use field_view_field():

$view = field_view_field('node', $node, 'field_image');
print render($view);


That will render the field as if it was attached to an entity view, and as such will provide the default image if none is available.