Pairing down gear for wildlife/travel weight savings

Ember88 wrote:

I’m debating on downsizing some of my gear for travel, hiking and other adventures. I mainly shoot wildlife and nature. My main desire is to keep the kit on my back on any given adventure under 5 lbs. I’m also finding that I gravitate more towards normal to telephoto focal lengths and rarely shoot wider than 24mm. Even when I find myself in 24mm situations, I find that I often want to shoot closer to 35-50mm.

I would tailor specific kit for the adventure (e.g. if it’s a wildlife excursion, I’d bring longer telephoto; if it’s more of a travel excursion, I’d bring shorter telephoto). At all times, I’d pack the “nifty fifty” RF 50mm or a light EDC prime lens (leaning towards the primes to keep the weight down). For the rare wider shots I do find myself wanting, I figure I can stitch a few Med-long telephoto shots together. I’m also hoping to have weather-sealed gear for the bigger lenses as these would be more exposed to the elements. Lastly, I figure for wide shots (where I don’t want to stitch) or snapshots, I’ll use my iPhone 14 PRO in RAW mode, (I mainly shoot RAW), which gets pretty decent reviews (using its main 48 mp camera).

This is what I’m thinking for subject specific setups:

Travel Setup: R5, RF 50mm, RF 70-200 f4. Total weight on back = 3.35 lbs.

Wildlife Specific: R5, RF 50mm, RF 100-500, RF 1.4 Ext. Total weight on back = 5.34 lbs…(would be under 5 lbs if I don’t pack the RF 1.4 Ext.)

Thus, I’m considering selling my RF 14-35mm and RF 100-400 (simply due to not being weather-sealed).

I’m also considering selling my RF 24-105 and possibly getting the RF 70-200 f4 (or just packing my RF 2.8 version). I may also sell the RF 2x extender as well (paired with the RF 100-500, the lens becomes pretty slow for wildlife and I’m just not reaching for it as often as the 1.4x).

All this to say: Has anyone sold off the RF 24-105 f4 and/or the RF 14-35 f4 and regretted it? Likewise, has anyone regretted selling the RF 100-400 and/or RF 2x Ext?
Lastly, as mentioned, I may pick up the 70-200 f4 (if I don’t need/want the weight of the RF 70-200 f2.8) or RF 35mm (if I would need wider than 50mm for some street/EDC lens). I understand the RF 70-200 f4 (and f2.8 version) to be great lenses. However, has anyone had experience with the RF 35mm for an EDC/street lens?

thanks for the input/insights

For your travel setup, I’d say the 50mm is too close to 70mm, especially given the cropping ability of the R5, so I’d suggest replacing the 50/1.8 with the 35/1.8.  It’s a nice lens for walking around, and for wider views you can do a 2 or 3 shot stitch.

The 70-200/4 is a great lens, good choice.  For travel with the R5 you can always use the 1.6x crop mode for 320mm equivalent.

For your wildlife setup, I’d still suggest having a wide-ish lens for environmental shots.  Again the 35/1.8 would work well as it has a near-macro capability.