Re: [Leica] Italy: Camera/lens advice

["Ted Grant" <tedgrant@home.com>]

Peter Klein wrote:

> My wife and I plan to vacation in Italy this spring.  We'll
> visit Rome, Sienna, Florence, and Venice, with side trips to Pompeii and
the
> countryside around Sienna.   I'm already thinking about what  camera and
>lenses to take.<<<<<

Simple answer Peter!  Take every damn lens and camera body you own. I mean
this trip cost more than a case of beer, so why would you even contemplate
not throwing everything into your bag and run with it?

Get a 100 rolls of colour slide film, and shoot like crazy! Simply because
it's not likely you're going back there next year to pick-up the things you
missed this time.  Not bloody likely unless you own a bank or have a key to
the back door of Fort Knox!

Forget asking what you should take and concentrate on the locations your
going to be visiting by spending your time checking out all the websites for
those locations doing research as to what's good, bad and ugly! So when you
get there, you wont be pissing away your time saying, "oh I wonder what I
should take pictures of ? Just a minute honey I Gotta e-mail the LUG and ask
the guys what I should take pictures of!" :-)

Quite frankly these kinds of "what should I take" questions on some
occasions are so dumb ass that I can't imagine why the question is even
asked in the first place!  You folks are all intelligent human beings, so
why would you ask such a simple minded question.

Look, you are going some place in the world that it's highly unlikely you'll
be back to in a few months, years or this century. So why worry about what
camera gear to take more than what is there to shoot in these locations?

If there is any question to be asked here it's, "Has anyone been to XYZ? And
if so, any suggestions of cool spots for pictures so I'm not wasting my time
running around looking at the same old tourist crap?"  And that simple
question is a hell of a lot more important for a successful shoot than ,
"What camera should I take ? "



ted Grant