For those who are curious to know which cameras and lenses I use:

My beloved camera is the Leica M8. I love it for its compact size and of course for the incredible image quality of this camera coupled with Leica M lenses. I mainly use it to photograph people and landscapes. It comes very handy when travelling and when I want to photograph among people without being noticed.

I have two Leica bodies: one M8.2 and one M8 upgraded to the M8.2 shutter. I have had the new shutter installed because it is quieter and it gives you a further one-stop advantage when shooting at low shutter speed.

One Leica body has usually the Voigtlaender 15mm f4.5 ASPH mounted, which becomes a 19mm due to the 1.3x crop factor of the M8's sensor. I like to photograph with wideangle, and a 20mm lens has always been my favorite. When I need a 35mm equivalent lens, I use the small but excellent 28mm Elmarit f2.8 ASPH. Lately I purchased the fantastic 21mm Summilux f1.4 ASPH, which has immediately become my favorite lens due to its ability to blur the background in a way that no other wideangle lens can do.

The second body has either the 50mm Summicron f2 mounted (usually for portraits), either the 75mm Apo-Summicron f2 ASPH. I use also of the 135mm Tele-Elmar f4, which can be quite an old lens but still is capable of wonderful performances.

In addition to the two digital Leica, I often bring with me a Minolta CLE, a great and super compact film camera that mounts Leica M lenses. I use it for black and white photography, mounting it with Kodak T-max 400 films. I scan the negatives myself with a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED scanner.

For wildlife photography the Leica gear is not really suitable, and therefore I use also a Canon DSLR equipment. At the moment I use two Canon bodies, a Canon EOS 40D and a Canon EOS 5D. I will soon upgrade to a Canon 7D and a 5D Mark II. With these cameras I use a Canon 400mm f4 IS DO, which I chose for its compact size and light weight (and which I often couple with a 1.4x extender), a 100mm f 2.8 macro a 17-40mm f4 and a 70-300mm f4.5-5.6.

When I travel I want to keep my photo bag as light as possible. To achieve this I ususally carry the Leica gear and the Canon 40D with the 400mm lens, the 100mm macro lens, a ring flash and a normal flash. I also carry a small lightweight tripod. I take also two external 500 GB data storage hard drives into which I upload my photos (one is for backup), and a Dell Mini 9 Netbook computer with MAC OS/X system installed (which is faster and more reliable than Windows). All this is carried in the miraculous Voltaic Backpack, whose solar panels and battery pack charge all my batteries.

Atogether the fully laden backpack weights at about 11kg - a fraction of the weight I used to carry around only 5 years ago...