After years of climbing, I have more packs than sense, so the only real issue is protection of the lens. I have ALL my lenses in individual cases (Lowe, etc.), so that I can take whatever lenses I imagine needing. And they are all protected. I ALWAYS take a bunch of those plastic bags one finds in the produce section of grocery stores; if it gets wet, I put each lens inside the plastic bag and then inside the case. And, if I KNOW that is going to rain, I put all the photo gear inside a large plastic garbage bag inside the pack. Then there is no danger, short of falling into a river and going underwater, that any gear will get wet.
As to what pack would seem the best, I would argue to buy one that is larger than you might need, but with compression straps can be configured to handle lesser loads without undo swaying about. My favorite such pack is a Patagonia with good suspension. It also has a water bladder and top pocket, so I am able to have fluids and other things easily reached. And I do recommend a pack with a good suspension; you want the weight to be riding mostly on your hips, not your shoulders.
With a large enough pack, you have greater flexibility. I have taken the Patagonia pack with sleeping bag, tarp, stove, food, etc, AND lenses and camera for a lengthy overnight trek. While such packs can be bought new, there are various outlets for seconds, etc. Sierra Trading Post online is a good place to start. Locally you may have a second-hand goods store. In Asheville, NC there is "Second Gear." Even ebay may have good gear.
But if you get a pack that is well built, it will be fairly comfortable, which is real important; if it hurts, you are not apt to 'go there' frequently.
With a tele lens one can 'pull' far-off objects into perspectively seemingly closer relation to objects in the foreground. Several images from the Wind River Range allowed a distant mountain to appear next to a much closer mountain. Similar effects can be had with other distant objects, provided that they are large enough to 'feel' nearer.
OK, I'll add a bit more to an already well-voiced set of observations. I have all these older Olympus macro lenses with a bellows. So, using a Sony a7rii, with extension tubes on that, then an adapter for the Olympus lenses on top of the bellows allows for incredibly sharp, if definitely limited dof. I put leaves or flowers on a light table, flatten them out either prior to placement and/or with weights on their edges, thereby somewhat accommodating the minute dof. But allows for seriously macro or even microscopic images. And, although it would be nice to shoot outdoors, there is no way to get that whole rig set up and then control wind or other external factors. Just some ideas for possible alternate setups. And, although some of the Olympus lenses are not cheap, the bellows and at least a couple of their macro lenses are available at reasonable prices on ebay.
I started in Sony with the NEX-7, which I still have and use. After many years of shooting with the 24mp, I bought the a7rii. It was considerably cheaper than the then a7riii. I truly love the camera! Yes, it has limited battery life and does not have all the fancy new eye focus features, but the images are incredible. I think your lens choices are good, but, of course, it depends on what you want to shoot. If mostly landscapes, you might want to look at the Laowa lenses; there is one, grantedly manual focus, at 10-18mm, which has fairly low distortion. And Laowa also has fixed wide angle lenses that claim "0" distortion. But the 16-35mm is a great lens, as well. I do not have the 70-200; still using a Canon with adapter there. But the only drawback I would see with the a7riv would be the massive file sizes. As long as you have the hard drives and memory cards for it, it should produce amazing images. And reportedly you can shoot at 26mp in a cropped mode, allowing some flexibility. It would be nice if they had various file sizes, especially in raw format, to allow one to choose how many pixels are needed.
You also could purchase the new a6600 to allow you less dense files. But that probably sounds like a stupid idea right now, given that you just ordered the camera. But for outdoors shots in the wilderness (or where I have to lug equipment a long way), I often still take my NEX-7 with the Zeiss 16-70, f4 and the 70-300mm, which allows me incredible flexibility without massive weight.
Anyway, I do think that the Sony 'train' is leading the pack of mirrorless developments presently. That does not mean that they will always, and, surely, given Nikon and Canon long-standing dominance, they will respond with superior cameras and lenses.
The one thing I wish Sony would do is provide viable emulation of Fujifilm's film approximations. Since Fujifilm uses the Sony processors, it should be a relatively easy task.
Perhaps not what you have been thinking, but I have a Samsung TV for my monitor. Cheaper than the typical computer monitor (especially from Apple) but with good colors and size (28"). And the larger size means that I can use my wireless keyboard from across the room, if I so choose and can read the words easily. And for working on photos, the size DOES help, as well as all the color adjustments.
Just an alternate idea....
Azted, Thanks for considered reply; I watch CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and BBC, but most of my sense of things comes from The Economist and Foreign Affairs, in conjunction with various friends in England, France, and Italy. I do find all the major TV networks excessively strident, other than BBC. I will avoid discussing the madness here. Again, thanks.
Got it; thanks; I am sufficiently chagrined for stepping out of bounds...
Has already stopped, except....
As I commented last, I will refrain, even as I am more than worried about our context. Thanks, Blurryeyed.
Although not 'polite,' bringing politics up at this juncture in our history, for me at the least, is a moral imperative: we are in deep, very deep trouble, with danger afoot of even greater damage to our citizens, our democracy, our reputation in the rest of the world (except for Russia), our economy, and, most importantly, the world's environment. I will refrain from pushing further, except to say, "it is time to jettison politeness, while remaining open to earnest, sincere discussion of real issues." This is a a photo discussion context, but, if it had existed in pre-N**i Germany, would we have avoided these distressing considerations to remain polite? I fear the answer would have been, "yes." I pray daily for all of us, for indeed, "we are all in this together."
I used to be in windows, and still use DOS and Linux, but now, all that happens within a MAC Pro tower. Yes, it is an older box, but through a brilliant and reasonable MAC expert, the system has been reconfigured with a six core Xeon processor, AMD graphics card, and 32 GB of ram. And I do run Windows, Linux, and DOS on it as well. The fella who is really a good guy and knows how to tweak a MAC to maximize it (e.g. uses a solid state startup drive) is Stephen Esser at Esser Design in Phoenix. His number: 602-257-9790. He can beat any price for a comparable configured new system by wide margins. The box described above was something over $800.00.
Just to mention benefits: able to use a Samsung TV as monitor, able to add on as many printers, hard drives, scanners, etc. as wanted with numerous USB connections, as well as FireWire, which I don't use, but it is there. The case is large allowing for inclusion of 4 hard drives inside. After more than 3 years, no problems. And I rarely use Windows, but it is there, if needed. I use DOS for old software that is still valuable for non-photographic work. And Linux is still what I would hope someday matures to the point of sufficient ease of use to cause all the money-makers to go hide in their holes; but the OS and I are not there yet. But with the right processor, you can run just about anything.
Just to add a bit more info...hopefully not confusing, but rather possibly really interesting. Laowa is a Chinese company that makes some very unusual lenses. If you look up their website, you can explore their offerings. Whether or not their lenses might work for you is dependent upon what system you are in, but I, with Sony A7rii, am anticipating purchasing at least one of their macro lenses. One intriguing aspect of their efforts is use of a wider angle macro, allowing for greater depth of field...not found elsewhere that I have seen, although adapters with some older Russian lenses apparently provide similar possibilities.
rjaywallace,
So sorry to hear of your health troubles. Not sure how you might receive this, but I will pray for you. Your comments here have always been astute. Thank you.
Thanks, Charles Smith for those references. I will try them out. Much appreciated.