Your challenge will be photographing churches and dark castles without a tripod. I just returned from Ireland (with my tripod). But occasionally I didn’t take the tripod and camera into some buildings. Any modern phone has a nice camera. The iPhone 7+ did a fine job. The best part was doing a “pano” with it...specially scrolling from top to bottom or v.v., not just sideways. It’s a tool almost everyone has, so why not use it?

For the Sony you mention, I would use a gallon or a 2 gallon zip lock bag, the ones with the easily slider to close the bag. I used to take my camera out of the bag, shoot and put it back in the bag.

Assuming you are willing to use a phone camera instead for just fun pictures....

Now I like using my iPhone 7+. It is “water resistant” for so many minutes up to so many feet (you can look up the specs if interested). I now use the orange foam Temdan case because it will float the phone on top of the water and is easy to see and find. I like tha lanyard that goes around my neck and keep it in my shirt pocket, but I had to be one of those “fishing” shirts with large, large pockets.

this week I bought a $70 Sirui lens and it’s non battery case for about $100. The lenses attach firmly to the phone as compared with clip on lenses which I had to play with every time before I shot a picture. Just remember to use a lanyard around your neck because it does not fit in the Temdan orange floating case.

With the Sirui or Moment add-on lens you can roughly get a 100 mm zoom equivalent. It is slightly better than the quality of zooming in post processing from the regular Portrait lens image from the native iPhone 7+. The quality improvement is slight, however.

I tried clear bags for my old phone and small cameras and shot through them. In the store they worked well and created clear images. But once the slightest moisture or salt got on the bag, you could not really shoot thru the bag.

PS take several cloth wipes in your shirt pocket to get any water droplets off the lens.

Steve Perry's book says that Nikon 3-D favors color differences for determining and following it's subject. Being that whales and the water were grey when I lived in Alaska, I would think 3-D might loose it's subject's focus more than single point.. Just thinking.

I agree that an Arca-Swiss connection is great. I bought a Manfroto tripod and head, but I ordered the Manfroto Arca-Swiss connector on the Manfroto head. The Manfroto Arca-Swisss plate that came with the system works great. But some of my other Arca-Swiss plates are not easily released form the Manfroto head (they stay stuck when you press the spring release). The Manfroto tripod rep tells me that not all Arca-Swiss plates are the same. I see almost a mm difference in those that I have. And some have the angle of the ridge at more obtuse angles than others. MORAL TO THE STORY: take your plates with you and make sure they connect and release easily form the Arca-Swiss connector on the ball head you are considering buying.....or be sure you can return it if not happy with it.

Two padded legs might be to carry on your shoulder with less pressure.
I have some light tripods with only one padded leg. That is so one can carry in cold weather without a glove and not have the metal directly on the hand. That is important when close to 0 F or even 32 F when there is rain or mist, starting to freeze on the metal.

I've had several of their water resistant, "tough" cameras in the past, way back form around 2008. They are good. I particularly like the 5X zoom which makes it close to 150mm.

Hackers are quite clever. Once while on vacation, I needed to call Vanguard, the mutual fund company. I googled them and tried to get their site on the internet. Turned out to be a pron site. Thought I made a mistake and used the same address. Again it was a porn title.

I called a Vanguard and told them about it. They sent me to a special group that researched where I had found their address. They called me back the next day to tell me the problem. Someone had copied the words Vanguard uses in what shows up in internet searches and made the fake one show up as the top searched item. Almost everything was an exact replica. The only difference was the address: the fake Internet address had a “_” where the real Vanguard had a “.”

I have no idea how mis directing you from Vanguard to a porn site would make $ for whoever did this.

PS a few days later the erroneous searched item no longer appeared as the first one found by Google when you searched for Vanguard. Don’t know if the real Vanguard had something to do with removing it.

This is not exactly what you are asking, but perhaps something to consider. I used WD for years for the Time Machine backups on my Mac. Then suddenly last year it started to have problems. The WD would not wake up to do the backup in the middle of the night. If I woke it up it would work fine. Apple told me it was a problem they were having with WD. WD said it was a problem they were having with their WD power supply. I din't really understand that as the sudden development of the problem. WD sent me a replacement since it was still under a long warranty period of 3 years (I don't know if that was standard or if I had paid extra for that extension). Anyway, problem recurred on the new unit...it didn't wake up automatically to do the Time Machine backup.Maybe it was a mismatch of communication fo WD with an Apple software update? If so, it might have been fixed by now. In any case, I switched to Seagate 6T for about $120 on Black Friday and now I store my photos in that. The Mac Time Machine backup is now done on a Seagate 8T I bought for about $200 way before Black Friday. Both Seagates are working fine.

I apologize. I mis quoted him. He said "the sharpest" , not the best.

I see lots of people recommend the 70-200 mm f/2.8. I own the Tamron VR model A009 and it is great. “The Angry Photographer” says the newer “G”model is the best lens for the D850...even sharper than Nikon’s he says. The Nikon sells for way way over $2k. The new Tamron is called the “G” and sells for $1.2k. The older model still can be found for just under $1k. I bought the older model but grey market from Canada, thru Amazon, with an international warranty for $750 USD. It is great. But it does weigh a lot! Look up the weight compared to the Nikon to see if that would be a benefit to you. I use mine on a monopod when I shoot events like the Renaissance Fair.

I own Flashpoints . They do fine for me, but I have no comparison experience.

However, the instructions and YouTube information was quite poor for the Flashpoint. I looked up the Yongnou’s intructions and YouTube and used that to figure out how to use my Flashpoint, since they were virtually identical as far as the buttons.

I like MTF curves to compare quality within a line of lenses from a single vendor. But I understand they cannot be used to compare different vendors because they are each tested differently. I understand that Nikon’s curves are true curves, generated from real lenses. Cannon’s I read are are computer generated theoretical curves, not curves from physical lenses taken off the production line. In addition, either Nikon or Fuji’s curves are at wide open aperture while the other is one f-stop larger (one aperture smaller).

Even in million dollar CAT scanners, curves were used to the advantage of the vendors for sales promotions. I remember one company comparing their minimally higher line-pair resolution at 35% contrast difference vs another manufacturer’s curves which where taken with a 28% contrast difference in their test pattern. What a farce!

I would not say from the MTF curve that the Canon lens is any better than the Nikon....or any other vendor. Can’t compare across vendors.

I ordered it from Adorama on Nov 7 and received it in Dec 4.
But it is funny that I had called the week before and asked when it might arrive. They told me all the ones they had received that week from Nikon were “allocated” and I was not on that list. Nevertheless I got it next week.
Maybe someone cancelled out or maybe it was because I told them I should be on the Nikon Proffesional Service (NPS) list but had not filled out all the forms with Nikon yet. (I hear NPS members get put at the head of the line).

If you do need to replace it, the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 VR has been an excellent choice for me. It is my sharpest lens. Dxo-mark recommends it as one of the best lenses in resolution for the D800 line...even above the Nikon model because of cost and almost exact resolution. There is a new model with G2 added to the name, it costs about $1200. The older version is still being sold as new for $1000. I bought mine as a grey market (Canadian) for $750 with an international 5 year warranty. I must say, it is heavy!

I loaded it OK into my Mac when it first came out as the 2018 version. I told my brother about it and he has the problems you and many describe trying to load it on his Windows computer.... even though he is very savvy. It kept requiring de-installs and then typing in his registration every time he wanted to open it. He did finally reach a human at Luminar and they told him they were having serious problems with their Windows product and were trying to hire help. He asked for his $ back and got it.

I see that some who wrote where able to load it OK (on a mac) after some instruction form UglyHedgehog comments. Yes, it might be something as simple as bad instructions from Luminar, perhaps even worse for Windows than for Mac. But in any case, they re losing business from people who can't load it.