I can telling you that my experience when I bought my DSLR ever since 2007, I started traveling with 2 hand carries. 1 with my laptop & all the necessary chargers & adapters, another is my camera bag with 1 wide angle 10~22mm, 2 x tele with 18~200mm & 100~400mm. I had been on most of the major carriers (BA, CX, JL, KA, LH, QF, SQ, TG, & UA) in & out around the world in all F, J, & Y class without any problems.

But when recently back in Mar 2012 while I was doing a One World Circle Pacific trip, when I flown in QF from LAX to BNE, still without any problem, but when I departed out of BNE to SYD with another QF flight, now the problem came, it's no the airlines, it's the security agent that stop me before I hand in my 2 hand carries on to the X-ray belt, what she said that I can't have 2 bags, plus she weight each of my bag, both were 8kg & 9kg, I told her I'm on J Class, she insisted that I need to check-in 1 bag only, plus another hand carry need to be light up to less than 7kg, just like another QF F class passenger do, then I open 2 of my bags & shown it to her that all those are my important stuff which it's a must with me at all times, she just simply ignored & asked me to go back to the QF check-in counter to sort things out, so I went back to the QF 1st class check-in counter & trying to ask for assistance, they also said that they can't ask their station manager to write an exemption letter, but what they can do was asked me to handheld my laptop, so that I can put all the foreign currencies & other light important stuff moved it to my camera bags outer pocket, then I can check-in my laptop bag, with just the camera bag, over 1 to 2kg, QF supervisor can sign off on a QF luggage tag, which was attach it to my camera bag, so by the 2nd time I went thru security again, she let me thru, therefore just want to share with you guys that sometimes it wasn't just the airlines who looks after the 7kg rule, even the local airport authority does, beware of it...!