There's a saying "buy the glass, rent the camera" as camera bodies change much more frequently than lenses. There's more camera mounts now than when I first heard the saying though.
For professional work you rent both the lens and the body so you can use the highest end gear specialized for the one particular job and aren't left hanging on to a $10k lens you use once a year.
how is that different? They both mean that you won't be keeping the camera while holding onto the lenses. Also, at the time of the saying, it was for professional film shoots and not your take on vacay. Yes, it's an old saying, but rang true for a long time. Similar to Moore's law. Neither are as relevant while still being a bit truthy.
The saying is more that camera bodies get updated far more often than glass so you should care more about having great glass and swap out the camera bodies as needed. But owning lenses but no camera body would be absurd.
Regardless, it is outdated when very few owned film cameras. If you had a chance to buy a set of Cooke lenses for a steal even though you didn't own a camera, you absolutely would if you were able. You could then rent a Red, Arri, or even film cameras as needed. You're forcing this into a modern digital only situation where camera bodies are dirt cheap maybe from being younger so that's your familiarity??
Nowadays lenses are improving in image quality significantly, particularly in the suppression of chromatic aberrations, and sharpness across the frame in zooms and wide angle lenses. Cheap mirrorless lenses put legendary L glass to shame nowadays. A bunch of Chinese manufacturers have autofocus lenses with amazing image quality. However, the bodies are sort of plateauing with 24 MP sensors still being popular for many years.
how's the pay shooting the furry community these days?
I've also been looking to hire a videographer to record DJs/the crowd at furry club events but I don't know the market rate for that just yet.