In May of this year, I bought a mirrorless Nikon Z7 II with a Z-mount 24-200mm zoom attached; this kit weighs in at around 1.2kg. If I swap out the zoom for the Z-mount 40mm prime lens I bought, I drop the weight I have slung around my neck to about 800gm. While the full-frame Z7 II (translation: the camera’s image sensor that records each photo taken is roughly the size of a 35mm film negative) is not a small camera, it is nonetheless noticeably smaller and lighter than the Nikon D750 I used for 8 years preceding my purchase of the Z7 II. Not that I am getting older or anything like that, but the reduction in weight has definitely been a welcome change.
All of that said, I was surprised at the number of people I saw in Japan walking around doing street shooting with enormous zoom lenses attached to their cameras. By way of example: I cannot imagine spending a day carrying around a camera-lens combination as big and heavy as the young woman in the photo is packing. I can’t tell exactly what she has there, but I figure her rig weighs at least 2kg and possibly as much as 3kg. Before you say that isn’t so much, try carrying around that kit for a day of shooting and let me know how your neck feels when you get home. And keep in mind that hand-holding a big zoom lenses like that steady enough to get really sharp images is no easy trick, even with vibration reduction built-in.
Well, as somebody once said: different folks, different strokes.
