I think I have got to the age, lighter is going to be better, carrying this gear in my Lowepro Flipside 450 around Derbyshire a few days ago was quite a task, even when I left the 70-200 out.
Having recently been diagnosed with tremors, its getting hard to hold D700 + Tamron 24-70 for any length of time. So I feel this might have to be a must rather than want to, or perhaps go back to a crop camera with lighter lenses maybe, Just very unsure at the moment..
Fifteen years ago my doctor warned me that the best I could expect from exercise at my age was to slow down the rate at which I was losing strength, rather than increasing it. Well, it certainly has proven to be very much more difficult than it used to be to get any stronger. On the other hand as I aged I'd been very gradually getting fatter for decades. Everyone except me thought that was a good thing, because everyone except me had always thought I'd been too skinny.
I discovered that losing a stone of fat (6.4 Kgs for you youngsters) wasn't too hard, using the old traditional method of walking more and eating less while boosting protein intake and doing a bit of weight lifting so as not to lose muscle at the same time. That meant that when I was carrying 6kgs of camera gear in a backpack I was in fact carrying less total weight than when I was overweight and carrying nothing. Plus despite my doctor's warning I had also got a bit stronger.
On the other hand several years ago I badly damaged my right hand and ankle when falling down stairs. Nothing broken despite horrid crack from the ankle. The ankle took about six months to recover to normal slightly limping walking duties and about two years to return to apparently as good as new. The hand alas took about two years to recover maybe half its previous grip strength, and hasn't improved any more than that. As a result I simply can't hand hold my crop sensor DSLR at all with a big lens on it, and not for very long with a small lens on it. Supporting a lot of the weight with the left hand doesn't take enough of the right hand grip strain away.
I tried special hand braces in combination with camera hand straps, but they didn't work well enough and were too clumsy. I discovered to my surprise that screwing my camera onto my folded up big monopod, while it made the total hand holding weight a lot bigger, offered such a nice big fat cylindrical foam cushioned grip on the upper part of the monopod that I was able to take all of the weight of the camera when held up to the eye with the left hand, leaving the right just to stabilise and control. It was also oddly much easier to carry the whole weight of camera. monopod, and big lens, hanging down comfortably in either hand, using that big fat cylindrical grip. I found I could walk around for hours hand carrying camera, monopod, and big lens, just by regularly swopping from hand to hand to stop muscle fatigue. By adding a longer quick release bracket to the camera with two tripod holes in it I could also attach both the 'pod and a cross shoulder tripod hole mounted sling strap for easy hands free quickly accessible carry.
Note that I'm not talking about extending the monopod to rest its foot on the ground, although that's a convenient option to have. I'm simply talking about using the monopod as a big fat comfy carrying handle which lets me take all the hold-up-to-the-eye weight off my damaged right hand. In fact I'll often extend the monopod just a tiny bit so that the foot tucks nicely into my trouser belt for longer hand holding sessions with a big lens on the camera.
As a bonus to this use of a folded up monopod just as a weight-bearing handle, the extra weight and even greater added rotational inertia of the added hand held monopod gives quite a useful bit of extra camera stability to my hand held shots, especially with longer lenses.
In sum by losing the same weight of fat as my usual reasonably loaded camera gear bag, and adding a monopod as an easy weight bearing carry handle to take the weight away from my damaged right hand, I'm managing to comfortably carry around a lot more camera for much longer distances than fifteen years ago, when overwork behind a desk had turned me into a panting easily fatigued chubby slob who couldn't walk for more than half an hour without needed a snack break.
I'm now 75, by the way. Overworking at a desk job I'd not only got weak and fat, I'd developed diabetes and had a heart attack. Trying to hang on behind the desk to maximise my pension had started to seem like it might be rather risky project. Retiring early to lose the desk, walk more, and lose weight quite possibly saved my life.
