This past summer I went to Germany and Italy for two weeks. That was family / business / sightseeing trip, but I had to limit myself to a small backpack, whatever I could fit in pockets of a travel vest (which is, in fact, quite a bit) and a camera bag. I chose to take my D40 with two lenses and a laptop (I needed it for work), while limiting the number of t-shirts and other unimportant things. I’ve got back with a few shots of Trieste and Venice I’m quite proud of (check out my old post in pub). I would never be able to do that with my pocket-size camera.

If you feel like taking your D40 take it. You won’t regret it.

I used to travel with a SLR and a whole raft of lenses.  I have some gorgeous pictures of sunny Spain that I consider professional quality.  The next trip was to Scotland and Scandinavia.  It was rainy and dark and I almost always seemed to have the wrong speed film in the camera.  The pictures are no better than I would have gotten with a $100 automatic camera with a zoom lens.  Then next trip I took two camera bodies and all the lenses so I could have 2 different speed films available.  It was again rainy and dreary and my pictures are only fair.

I now travel with a fairly basic automatic camera with a zoom lens (only 400 ASA film) and/or (depending on the type of trip) a fairly basic digital.  It’s probably 20 lbs less gear and I’m a lot happier traveler.

Personally I really hate dragging a big camera with me. You can just as well make beautiful pictures with a compact camera. Especially when you’re ging out at night you just don’t want to take a big and vulnerable cam like a D40.
I have two cams, usually I take the Panasonic:
Nikon Coolpix S500: just a great small pocket camera, but you can’t set things manually with it. Just easy to take with you in your pocket.
Panasonic Lumix TZ3: 10x optical in a compact housing. The Leica lense is just great. Unfortunately not a winner in the evening / at night. Has a bigger brother FZ18 with 18x optical, but that’s almost the size of a D40.

Ha, funny actually… I bring my cheesy Nikon coolpix 4600 on trips with me. I get some surprisingly nice pictures from it, but apparently I’m not the first one with this idea; no kidding, THREE times last summer in Germany when myself or another tourist confronted eachother asking to take one or the other’s&nbspicture, we had the eact same friggin’ camera! Good for a “traveller-connection” laugh when neither of you speak much of eachother’s native language []

I have a Nikon Coolpix S51. And I love this camera. When I am travelling I prefer a small digital cameras because I bring also some analog lomographic cameras with me. And this camera is definitely small! But the screen is huge (3’‘). Of course this requires a lot of power. But always I bring with me another battery in my bag.

Take care,
backi