How much does that weigh???

As we were leaving Nice at the end of April to catch a "dawn patrol" flight to Paris my wife offered to help me with the baggage and picked up my carry-on bag.  It was stuffed with one large laptop and two tablets, power supplies, documentation and three of my small Sony NEX cameras with manual focus Nikon Nikkor lenses.  She asked how on earth I could carry such a heavy thing as I watched her leave the bag right where it was.

She had a point.

We went to Nice by TGV and I knew I could overload the baggage a little as we would be taking taxis between the rail stations and our apartments.  I never figured we would be trying to get a flight anywhere.  I would never have packed my camera gear the way I did.

So when we got home and after we settled back into our apartment I brought out the little food scale my wife uses for measuring food stuffs.  Here is what I found.

940grams - Sony A6000 with Lens Turbo II focal reducer and a Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 pre-Ai - This was one of the camera/lens combinations in the bag in Nice.  That is 2 pounds of equipment right there and I had two more image makers in the side pocket next to this one.

662grams - Sony NEX-7 with Lens Turbo II focal reducer and a "pancake" Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AiS - This was another of the cameras in my carry-on bag the morning that my wife tried to lift it.

586grams - Sony NEX-5T with Lens Turbo II focal reducer and a Nikon Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 Ai - this is very similar to one of the other cameras in my bag where I had a pretty little Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 Ai.

347grams - Sony NEX-5T with Sony 16mm f/2.8 SEL

409grams - Sony NEX-5T with Sigma 30mm f/2.8 EX DN E

422grams - Sony A5000 with Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN E

542grams - Sony NEX-7 with Sony 18-55mm /f/3.5-f/5.6 SEL OSS kit lens

587grams - Sony A6000 with Sony 50mm f/1.8 SEL OSS

The Nikkor lenses are built like tanks.  They are rugged and the housings and barrels were machined from brass and aluminum.  The optics tend to be large compared with super-light weight plastic barreled modern APS-C format auto-focus lenses.  Image quality is pretty consistent across the range of Nikon lenses, too.  The way they treat the out of focus transition behind the point of focus is nothing short of gorgeous.  I really enjoy using these old lenses.

Yet, all image quality things being equal (which I will revisit in another blog post or two), in the future I can carry two cameras with modern AF optics for the weight cost of just one of my Nikon Nikkor manual focus setups.

While on the road, this kind of weight savings could be good to experience.