Let's go to photography first, then advise you of road conditions and related information.

If you are going to photograph architecture, you need a PC lens. "PC" for "perspective correction." You don't want to have your collection look amateurish, with parallel verticals converging because you have to tilt your camera up to fill the frame with a tall building.

This should go without saying, but I've met architectural historians and academics who have yet to figure out this simple matter. The trouble is PC lenses don't come cheap. The wider the better. In so-called automatic systems, the best, almost the only, is the Canon EOS 24 mm Tilt-shift lens, which will run you upwards of $1100. You blanch. Well, them's the beans! Canon produces the widest PC on the automatic market (and it doesn't autofocus, but does auto meter), and it will take a front polarizing filter (which is the most important filter that you can own). This is actually quite unique, for it not only shifts up-down or left-right (30° increments in any rotation), which provides perspective correction, but also tilts, which gives you the kind of corrections you otherwise get only on view cameras. If you go to my exhibition "Medano and Raukawa" (click here) you will see many shots of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument in Colorado which could be taken ONLY with a tilt lens You don't need an expensive Canon body, but you do need that lens. There is no alternative other than, say, the Nikon PC 28, a manual lens that will work on most Nikon bodies; it will take a front polarizer, too. There are at least a half dozen historic buildings in Europe that the Nikon cannot take, but even the wider Canon 24 cannot fit all of Ulm cathedral into the frame without some perspective distortion.

Ulm cathedral; Canon EOS 24mm Tilt-shift, maximum vertical shift

Note darkening of top of image, caused by max. shift

There is no alternative other than, say, the Nikon PC 28, a manual lens that will work on most Nikon bodies; it will take a front polarizer, too. An alternative is to use a single-focal length ultra-wide angle lens (a zoom will have too much linear distortion) such as a 20 mm or 17 mm unit, and use it vertically. Aim the lens so the center of your focusing screen is at your eye height on the building, then crop out the bottom third of the resultant photo. This won't work, of course, for slides.

By the way, I do not "take" pictures; that is theft! I make photographs.

Once you've gotten the TS or PC lens situation satisfied, you'll probably want a standard wide angle lens or zoom. Again, the best is from Canon, their 16-35 mm f 2.8 L-series EOS unit, at $1370 (the "old" 17-35, if you can find one, should be quite a bit cheaper, and is a true 17 mm). It is a true 16 mm, while competing lenses marked 18-35 or 19-35 are 19 or 20 mm lenses (this much "cheating" is allowed under Japanese regulations!), and the Canon is more linear (namely, has less barrel distortion at the wide-angle end). It is also fast, at f 2.8 throughout its range. Before this lens came on the market, I'd used Canon's 20-35 mm f2.8 FD (non-autofocus) lens. If you can find a store with a 17-35 Sigma on the shelf (about $470), buy it, or the slower Canon 20-35 mm f3.5-4.5 (about $370) if you need to save the money. Tokina, from which I've never had a bad lense, makes a new professional f2.8 20-35 mm for $600, so if you want speed, or constant f-stop over the zoom range, consider this one. If you really want wiiiide, Sigma makes an f3.5-4.5 15-30 mm lens (about $580) and an even wider 12-24 ($$670, for digital only).

One warning about linear distortion at ultra-wide angle focal lengths. The wider you get, the more a sphere distorts from round to oblong, looking almost like a football at 17 mm. Which is why I never recommend the 14mm "linear" lenses for architecture, and use anything in the 16-18 mm ragne carefully for interior shots almost exclusively. For this reason, you might wish to limit your wide-angle choice to a 20/21-35 mm zoom.

For details, such as the gargoyles on a French cathedral, you need telephoto power. Since there are few details high up on tall Wright buildings (what few there are), and most are also the same detail as at lower levels, long telephoto may be redundant for Wright, but here's some information for those who want a complete camera bag. The 28-200 and 35-300 and such lenses loose so much speed at their long ends (as well as quite a bit of resolution) that you may not be happy with your photographs. If you are shooting only negative film, Kodak Gold Max or the Fuji equivalent are excellent, but my most recent test show Konica's 800 and 400 speed films to be outgrageously sharp. At 800 ASA, even slow lenses can work satisfactorily. If you are shooting only slides, nothing over ASA 400 is any good unless you are willing to spend quite a bit both for the film and for push processing. In this instance, get the new professional ED 200 Kodak Ektachrome, shoot it at ASA 640 but have it processed at 2 full f-stops push. That will give you outrageously saturated color and high resolution you won't believe at such speed.

Canon's "Barcelona zoom" lens now has serious competion from Sigma with its f4-6.3 80-400mm range or its 50-500mm f4.5-6.3mm range. You may need the Canon EOS-3 if you want autofocus at the long lens (where it is f6.3; most autofocus cameras autofocus only to f5.6). Canon's "Barcelona zoom", designed especially for use by professional sports photographers under the bright sunshine of northeast Spain at the Barcelona Olympic games, is a 35-350mm zoom, f3.5 at 35 mm, holding that out to around 100 mm, then dropping to f5.6 for most of its longer range. You may find a used one on the market, because Canon has replaced it with a 28-300mm for the digital age where digital cameras push the focal length out by a factor of 1.6. You can use Canon's 1.4 extender to help either lens reach out to almost 500 mm (manual focus). Of course, these spectacular lenses are not cheap; but good news, the price, once $1900 for the 35-350 dropped to $1500. The newer lens, designed for digital cameras, 28-300mm, however, is $2200. The 2x extender, once $450, is now $280.

BUT WAIT. COMES THE REVOLUTION. IMAGE-STABILIZATION it is called. The Image Stabilization technology invented by Canon will stun you with its abililty to produce sharp images in only moderatly steady hands. Now they have several such lenses. Nikon has followed, slowly and at equally high prices. Hallelujah, Sigma has joined the fray with an f4-5.6 80-400mm. It will work, we are assured, with 1.4 and 2.0 tele-extenders. Sigma calls their system OS, for Optical Stabilizer. Any of the three systems adds two to three f-stops in terms of relative shutter speed for hand-held photography. So, if you are not experienced in hand-holding long lenses, you might find the Canon 75-300mm f4-5.6 USM IS at only $420 to be your best choice. You will then need a 35-70mm or wider mid-range zoom to cover the normal focal lengths to fill in the mid-range, but there are many choices in this highly competitive range.

To simplify what you carry and reduce weight, I offer the following, which I often use when I don't need to go beyond 300mm. Get the Canon f3.5-5.6 28-135mm IS lens and the Canon 2X APO extender ($410 + $280 = $670 ). Slow, surely, and you will manual focus on those gargoyles, but very lightweight. This is all you need if you are shooting mostly people and scenics, and few or no buildings.

Consider what I recommend if you have the funds;

Now consider how you can save if you need to;

8 meg digital cameras are no longer priced out of amateur photographer range. If you wish to go digital, different choices are necessary due to the pushing of focal lengths in digital imaging. It takes a lens with a focal length of 10 mm to equal the 16 mm of a 35 mm film camera. Accordingly, Canon and others have produced lenses specifically for their digital bodies . The only problem is that they have not yet provided a Tilt-Shift lens of 15 mm focal length to equal 24 mm in 35 mm format. The 24 mm becomes a 38 mm lens. You will have to decide if this is acceptable. With digital, an ultra-wide angle lens can be cropped at the bottom and be used much like a PC lens.

Germany has the most and freest superhighways. France has many superhighways, all too unconnected, and with outrageous tolls. The German Mark was 4 to 1 when I first went to Europe, the French Franc 5 to 1. Before the Euro the Mark was 2 to 1, the Franc 6.3 to 1. France should learn something. Communication begins with transportation. By the way, the Euro, ¤ , in the late Spring of 2005, iscosting about a $1.28.

Kilometers and 0.6 miles of pothole-free road, but so little free outside Germany.

Trucks, however, do not wear out the roads as they do in the US, for those even two/thirds as long as ours have three, not two, axles at the rear, 12 wheels in all. Their standard cab and trailer is a 22 wheeler (only 2/3 as long as ours), so carries less weight to be distributed over more tires. The 53-footers in America should be banned from two-lane highways (they cannot make a turn without illegally crossing into the opposite lane).

In America, every city of 50,000 or more is linked to the Interstate system. Europe (exclusive of the German speaking parts) is far behind in this matter. While America still has too many toll roads; one must note that the economy has been growing fastest in those parts of the country that have no tolls, and is slow or stagnant where old toll roads have still not been turned over to their states [note that Connecticut has one of the best economies in the northeast, and its segment of I-95 is no longer toll].

Yet in NW France, Rouen has no autoroute to Le Mans, nor Bilbao/Santander to La Coruna/Santiago da Compostela in NW Spain.

You can pay tolls throughout most of Europe with your credit card, but where some toll roads are short, cash is expected. This is true in Basque country in southwest France and north central Spain. And everywhere in Portugal.

Toll roads are two thin red lines with a large yellow line holding them apart on most maps (cf. Paris to Bordeaux). If the yellow area is white, the road is free (cf. Bordeaux to Bayonne).

If you plan to make phone calls back to the states from overseas, be certain to get an ATT direct card. This gives the telephone codes by which you can dial ATT and then call the US at much lower than European/hotel rates. MUCH lower. It is NOT a credit card, and you don't need an ATT Universal Mastercard or an ATT phone card to use this service, though it can simplify the dialing. I even found that it was often easier, and cheaper, to dial ATT direct, then call back to Germany, rather than use Deutsche Telekom! You can use your VISA or Mastercard in phone booths in Switzerland, and rates are reasonable.

Pepsi? You must be kidding. Coca-Cola is ubiquitous. I found some Schweppes Cola; stronger than Coke, in Spain. Now and then you see a Pepsi sign.

RNE = Radio National Espana. So you have RNE Classical tuned in and you hear a glitch, a part of a second blip, but the music goes on. The station has been automatically switched by your European radio from one transmitter/translator to another at a different frequency, because the station you were tuned to went out of range. America could have the subcarriers that makes this possible, so that you could stay tuned to NBC or to PBS or whatever as you crossed our immense nation but, no, the government has not authorized it.

"Kibbles and bits, kibbles and bits . . ." "Tunnels and bridges, tunnels and bridges . . ." That is what western Italy is. And tolls.