What Lens for Luggability?

I have just come back from 5 weeks in Europe with an Olympus OM-D. The 12-50mm kit lens worked well as a general walking around lens. Reasonable quality and the range is fine for interiors, landscapes, and streetscapes. Shooting raw or fine jpeg means you can easily 2 X the photo in edit with no appreciable loss of quality so you have a 24 - 200mm range in 35mm speak.  In reality the lenses don't weigh very much so the real issue with lenses is just swapping around as unknown events pop up in front of you. The kit zoom reduces this problem a lot.

"Luggability" is really about the camera and how you carry it around as a tourist. This is how I did it and it worked well. The neck strap, it is a nuisance, cut it up  and get a boot maker to sew the cut end into a loop and you have a serviceable wrist strap for about $5.00. The OM-D and kit lens is quite light and I found it very comfortable to dangle off a wrist as I was walking around.

One of the earlier posts recommended a sling strap and this is very useful. The Rapid is a bit bulky with padding and pockets - it is meant to carry a much heavier 35mm camera. You can buy the Rapid sliding swivel and camera eyelet as spare parts for half the price of the full thing then get some 25mm webbing strap from a camping supplies shop and make you own strap that is less obtrusive and fits nicely under a jacket. I carried the OM-D comfortably this way and the sturdy construction and water resistance meant that it survived bumps and some rain and snow without any problems. When I was taking a lot of photos I unclipped from the sling and used the permanently attached wrist strap.

Ditch the flash, put a spare battery in you pocket and you are good to go.

Earlier posts talk about taking various primes. Ignore all those recommendations and look at the one prime lens that floats your boat. If you have a passion about an area of photography take a prime that suits that so you can swap it on when you have a some time to focus on the passion.