I am planning a trip to Europe (Italy for 17 days) next year and have been spending some time over on the Leica forum where I am getting plenty of encouragement to dump my heavy old DSLR (and a lot of money) in favor of a M9.

Anyway...can anyone here share their experiences of traveling with an admittedly heave D700 and 24/70 lens. Was it a hassle? Was it totally worth it? Did you find yourself leaving it behind in the hotel at times, etc. ANY input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Bill C.

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Much depends on your tastes. I have been traveling with a D2h/D2x/D3 for the past five years, and that's been OK with me. I tend to use relatively extreme lenses, especially compared to a rangefinder: these days my travel kit is a 28-105, 180/f2.8 and possibly a 15/f2.8 or 8/f4 fisheye. A lot of that is beyond what one would shoot with a rangefinder. Sometimes I take a 500/f8 too, and I haven't been sorry for that very often. Until I got the 28-105 I sometimes took the 24-70/f2.8 and either a 90/f2.8 Macro or 55/f2.8 Micro. If I don't have time for shooting - which happens sometimes when the trip is really a business trip - I leave a lot of it behind and just take the first two, but if I were going on a trip like what you describe, some interesting period of time would be scheduled for serious photography.

There are other times when I consider getting an M9 too - in fact I'm dangerously close to a much less expensive Voightlander R3a and a couple of fast lenses (35/f1.4, 75/f1.8). But that's an add, not a replace, especially since that would be film.

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Dave
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