Renting equipment is fun.
But where am I going to get the most bang for my back for a rental? Should I pay extra for the insurance? Can I rent really expensive equipment? What equipment should I rent?
Those were the main questions I developed as I was on my search to rent equipment. And now I’m going to dive in to the answers. Keep in mind that I’m going to be very specific about what did and did not work for me. The needs of every production are going to be different depending on the film, the budget, the crew size, and your style of shooting. Alright, let’s do this!
RENTING STUFF WORTH OVER $5000-ish
The biggest thing I learned when renting equipment for my film is that there’s an invisible line that separates what you can and cannot easily rent through most companies. This line is determined by the value of the equipment and it varies from company to company but I’m going to mark this line somewhere in the $5000-ish range. At a local rental site in Portland that line has an exact number, $5500.
To be more specific, this thing of value that I wanted to rent for Arcadia Bay was the C100. The Canon C100 is a piece of equipment that is just crosses the line and becomes much harder to attain. In order to rent the C100 (or equipment of greater value) at most places you will need one of two things:
EITHER
A) PRODUCTION INSURANCE (EXPENSIVE)
B) TO PUT A DEPOSIT DOWN FOR THE VALUE OF THE CAMERA (EXPENSIVE)
DID I MENTION THESE OPTIONS ARE EXPENSIVE?!
I had neither of these things for Arcadia Bay. Now granted, having Production Insurance is a great idea for several reasons. In addition to being able to easily rent more expensive equipment, most locations will require you to have this in order to film. They want to know you are insured in case there is an accident on site. It makes sense. It just sucks for ultra low budget productions like us. If you can afford it, I recommend getting Production Insurance, otherwise you’ll have to have personal connections in order to shoot at most of your locations.
And putting a deposit down for the price of the camera? If I had that money lying around, I’d just buy the camera. But I understand why they have to do it.
So what is the solution? Thankfully in my search I found two companies that still offered a solution to rent the C100 without a huge deposit or production insurance. And here they are:
and
LENS PRO TO GO
I will start off by saying that I did not actually rent through lensprotogo, but I am fairly confident that you can indeed rent without production insurance or any deposit. I actually had placed an order through LPTG but later discovered that there was an opening at the even more affordable place that I wanted to rent. Thankfully, the card is not charged until the order is shipped, so I was able to cancel my order with the click of a button. A 17 day rental of the C100 was going to cost me $963 through LPTG, including shipping and a Protection Plan. The Protection Plan covered damage, you would pay 10% of the replacement value if the equipment was damaged. It did not cover theft or loss of the camera. Also to note, the shortest amount of time you can rent through LPTG is 4 days. There are often discount codes gloating around online to lower the rental cost, if you take an extra minute to google them.
ATS RENTALS
ATS Rentals is not a household name (wait, are any rental companies household names?) so I was a little wary to rent from them at first. Their rental price for the C100 was just on that border of “is this too good to be true?”. I googled reviews of the company and there were not a ton of reviews to be found, but the ones I did find where positive. So I decided it was worth the risk. However, by the time the funds from Seed and Spark arrived, the C100 was unavailable for rental through them. It later opened back up though. One reason ATS is less well known, is that they offer fewer rental options compared to other rental sites such as BorrowLenses. ATS does a little a bit more than camera/video, they rent projectors, PA systems, microphones, not just camera and video equipment. I believe they have only two C100 cameras. So if you want to rent from ATS it is best to place an order early. I also wanted to rent the Tokina 11-16 through them, but it was unavailable at that time.
All this to say, the C100 rental cost me $674 total through ATS. This included shipping, and a Protection Plan. With this Protection Plan you only paid 5% of the replacement value of the equipment. It did not cover theft or loss of the camera. This might be the best deal you can find anywhere. Now, one thing to note is that ATS did require a refundable $1000 deposit in addition to the cost of the rental. This may be an issue for some of you, but it is a lot more doable than $5000+. What I did is charge this deposit to an Old Navy credit card I impulsively signed up for one time (I guess I really wanted the discount). Then the money was simply refunded to the card after the rental was returned. Pretty easy. The other great thing about ATS is they only charge you one day for a weekend (most local rental places have this deal, more about that below).
You may be wondering what the condition of the equipment was. From every rental place you’re going to receive equipment that has reasonable wear and tear, but is fully functional. Really I only had a few minor complaints. There was a piece of dust on the protective glass in front of the sensor of the C100. We were able to simply blow this out though, so that caused no issue for us. Also, we never really got the internal mic to work. We recorded separate audio so we we never really concerned ourselves with trying to resolve this. In the end, I’ll give ATS the benefit of the doubt and go with operator error on the internal mic, as we never invested the time in to solving this problem (although as I move into editing, I see how it would have been helpful for synching sound).
LESS EXPENSIVE RENTALS
Whew. Alright, moving on from the expensive stuff. What if you just want to rent less expensive stuff? What are your options? I’ll spell them out for you. In each of these examples I’m going to compare the shortest rental possible for a Tokina 11-16 Canon EF lens. This includes a protection plan and shipping. Keep in mind that how these places fare against one another may change depending on how long you are renting the equipment.
Borrow Lenses
Borrow Lenses is probably the most well-established photo/video rental site out there, as well as likely having the most variety of photo/video equipment available. Their prices are reasonable. If you want a decent price, and want to feel 100% safe about your order, go with these guys. You can rent for as little as 3 days with Borrow Lenses. Borrow Lenses also has an option to pick up the equipment at stores in most major cities, rather than ship it directly to you, but it some cases this will be just the same price as having it shipped directly to you.
Tokina 11-16: 3 Day Rental: $65
Adorama Rentals
I don’t recommend renting from Adorama Rentals and here’s why: It appears that every rental requires you to have insurance or put a deposit down for the replacement value of the equipment. In order to find out how much shipping and insurance was going to be, I had to register with them…and I didn’t feel like going through this process (sorry guys). A 3 day Tokina 11-16 rental was listed as $26, but again, unsure if that included insurance and certainly did not include shipping.
Tokina 11-16: 3 Day Rental: $26+ and deposit/insurance
Lens Pro to Go
Lens Pro to Go is worth checking out. They’re very reputable and depending on the product, you may get a better price through them. The Tokina 11-16 price was identical to Borrow Lenses price for one extra day of rental. There is a 4-Day minimum rental through Lens Pro to Go.
Tokina 11-16: 4 Day Rental $65
Lens Rentals
Lens Rentals is unique in that they have a damage protection plan or a damage/theft protection plan that you can add to your order for a little more. This can give you a little extra piece of mind. Again another site worth checking out before you make your decision. 4 Day Rental is required.
Tokina 11-16: 4 Day Rental $64 (with damage protection, $66 with both damage and theft protection)
ATS Rentals
And back to ATS, their price was the best out of the online rentals I found. The great thing about ATS is that they charge you 1 day for a weekend rental and their protection plan is included in the price of the item. Their price jump for each day you rent seemed to be a better deal than the competition as well. Again the disadvantages here are that there is less selection/availability and they are not as well established as the competition. But would I rent from them again? Yes.
Tokina 11-16: 3 Day Weekend Rental $52, 3 Day Rental that is not the Weekend $58
Local Rental
If you are shooting on a weekend your most affordable option is likely going to be a local rental company. Here in Portland I rented from Pro Photo Supply, which is a great company. The deal is that you can pick up the equipment on Thursday after 3 PM and return it by Monday before 10 AM and get the price of one day’s rental. It’s a fantastic deal if you need the equipment in that time period, but is pricey if you need it for multiple days outside of that time. The other great thing about local rental houses is they are more likely to include extra accessories that you will want or need with the rental. For example, I rented a boom mic locally and that rental also included an XLR cable, a windscreen, and a blimp. If you’re renting a camera they will often include extra batteries and memory cards. Many online rental places will make you rent these accessories separately which costs you more money. The other great advantage of renting locally is that you avoid shipping costs, which brings the price down significantly. The thing with my local rental house is that the total replacement value of the all the equipment rented can’t be higher than $5500 without having to give a deposit for the replacement value or insurance. This is the only disadvantage of having these extra accessories. They include the accessories in the replacement value which means that you are able to rent less items before you hit that $5500 mark. They also required an imprint of my credit card in case I ran off with the equipment, and the rental did not offer a protection plan. I rented quite a few items locally and was pretty happy.
Tokina 11-16: 3.5ish Day Weekend (Thursday after 3pm-Monday 10 AM) Rental $25, 3 Day Rental that is not the Weekend $75
Overall the general rule is that if you are renting less than 3 days or on the weekend, local will be cheaper. If it’s longer than that, look online.
Protection Plan?
Should you get one? I’d say yes. It’s just nice piece of mind, especially if you aren’t operating the equipment. If you’re nervous handling expensive equipment, imagine how nervous you’ll feel when that equipment is in someone else’s hands. Stuff happens. If you’re just getting C-stands or durable, less expensive equipment, you’re probably okay. To protect against theft, our rule was that we always carried the C100 and lenses with us, we never left it in the car.
Equipment I Didn’t Use
Surprisingly, there was equipment I rented that was never used. I wish I could have the money back, but it’s also hard to say I regret renting it. I’d rather be over-prepared than under-prepared. What equipment didn’t I end up using?
C-Stands & Scrim Jim
C-Stands are a staple of film production, so I was sort of surprised that we never used them. I think the reason this is true is due to our shooting style. So much of our production was outdoors and we needed to move fast to keep up with the light. I also rented a 6×6 Westcott Scrim Jim, but we always ended up using a little fold-up scrim/reflector that my Cinematographer owned. The fold-up one was so much more portable There are times after the rental period was up that we could have used the 6×6 for some wider shots, but most of the time the smaller handheld scrim did the trick. If you are shooting outdoors I cannot emphasize enough how helpful it is to have some sort of scrim. It will make your shots go from ugly to beautful almost instantly.
Tripod Head
I rented this nice fluid tripod head from Borrow Lenses, because we were using a higher end consumer tripod. What I didn’t consider was that the tripod head might not mount to our tripod. And that’s exactly what happened. We did come up with an in-between solution, where we could still sort of use it, but it was goofy. I would have been better off to just rent a tripod than a tripod head.
BONUS: Superclamps are awesome with a boom pole and the H4N. I’d just buy one instead of renting. This is what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGUIy6awA1w
That’s what I have for you today! Let us know you’re good/bad experiences with renting camera equipment!
Happy filmmaking!
Arcadia Bay: A Short Mind Bending Film 