Why I Love to Rent Camera Gear Before I Buy

I don’t know of anyone who would argue with me that camera gear isn’t expensive.

If you’re serious about photographing nature and wildlife, I’m sure you’ve checked out prices for fast camera lenses and robust weather sealed cameras. I’m also guessing you’re as surprised as I am at some of the prices.

If you’re just staring out, it can be a daunting task trying to figure out what the next addition to your camera gear should be.

Even if you’ve been shooting a while, camera manufactures are always coming out with new lens configurations and upgrading their camera bodies. So what to do?

A couple of years ago I was thinking about buying a Nikon 200-500mm f5.6 lens. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t outrageously expensive but it was far from pocket change. Would the lens be a good fit for what I already had? Would it give me the kind of images I was hoping for? Was it sharp?

I don’t like to purchase something unless I know for sure it’s going to be used and it’s going to do the job I intended it to do. Luckily I discovered camera rental companies.

Basically what a camera rental company does is rent you camera gear at a fraction of the price it would cost to purchase that gear.

So whether you want to try something out before you buy it or if there’s a specialty lens you want to use for a project but can’t justify owning it because it won’t get used very often, a rental company is for you.

A camera rental company typically has a huge selection of camera gear from all different manufacturers. You can rent out lenses for your current camera, check out the latest camera body or even rent cameras and lenses from a different manufacturer to see if switching brands is in the cards for you.

The rental company I typically deal with is Lens Rentals out of Tennessee. They’ve been a great company to deal with and have a wide selection of gear to rent.

So How Does it Work?

Simple, you find the gear that you want to rent and you can choose which date you want the camera gear to arrive and then what date you want to return it.

If the camera gear you want to rent is already out on a rental, you won’t be able to select that date and it will let you know when the piece of camera gear is due back to Lens Rentals.

You have the option of adding damage insurance if you choose in case you’re worried about an expensive lens or camera body getting damaged while in your possession.

Take care of where to ship it, your payment and billing info and submit your order.

A signature will be required upon delivery so I always have my orders sent to the local FedEx store down the street from me, where I can pick it up an don’t have to worry about missing the delivery if I’m not home.

When your rental time is up, package the gear back in the packing materials it arrived in, slap on the prepaid shipping label and drop it off at any FedEx shipping location.

Another nice thing is if you want to own the gear you rented for seven days, Lens Rental will apply the cost of that rental towards the purchase of the lens.

Recently I rented a Nikon 60mm f2.8 micro lens. Nikon for whatever reasons calls their close-up macro lenses, micro.
Anyway, I purchased the Nikon ES-2 slide and negative adaptor that will allow me to digitize some of the thousands of slides I shot decades ago. I didn’t want to purchase the 60mm lens since I already own a 105mm 2.8 micro and a Nikon 200mm f4 micro, but the adaptor wont work with those two lenses. So, renting the 60mm lens for a week was the way to test things out and digitize quite a few slides.

The seven day rental for the 60mm lens was $38. Shipping by FedEx to me and back to Lens Rentals via a prepaid shipping label was $25 from Tennessee to Iowa. So with tax I was looking at a little over $60. Much cheaper than buying the lens and I will be able to digitize an awful lot of slides in seven days!

Next time you’re taking a trip and wished you had a certain piece of camera gear or you’re thinking about switching to a different camera brand, give a camera gear rental a shot.

Are you thinking about renting a piece of gear or looking to try out something new? Let me know below in the comments. If you’ve already rented from a camera rental company, how was your experience?