5 ms·

I once thought about a high-end camera rental side business. Never really completed the research, but I am curious again... Do studios and creators own these ca

by chirau 5y ago

I once thought about a high-end camera rental side business. Never really completed the research, but I am curious again... Do studios and creators own these cameras or they usually rent? Is there an aggregated marketplace where I could be able to put my camera for rent if I do eventually get one?

colechristensen 5y ago
I’ve seen people try to make “uber for camera rental”, I’m not sure if any of them succeeded. Most photography specialized retailers rent equipment. I think there’s a good mix between rent and own as there’s a lot of diversity in creators.
- wmf 5y ago
  It went horribly wrong when people realized that theft is easy and it wasn't covered by insurance. https://www.documentary.org/column/peer-peer-rental-cautionary-tale-plus-using-nonfiction-work-inspiration https://www.documentary.org/column/peer-peer-rental-cautiona...
nerdbaggy 5y ago
PRG is one of the biggest in the US for camera rentals, its rather unexciting. They have all the cameras, but for whatever reason most of them you have to specifically ask for. https://prggear.com/product-category/camera/camera-camera/camera-large-sensor/ https://prggear.com/product-category/camera/camera-camera/ca...
pvarangot 5y ago
It's not a bad gig but you need contacts and one of your primary competitors is a camera manufacturer, I think it was Panavision that has a big rental branch (and they rent Arri or Red too I think).
idhqbfojqbx 5y ago
Renting out cameras might give you influencers or youtubers as customers, but for producing a feature film or a TV show the rentals include everything from lights,lenses to generator trucks, with the camera only being the very tip of the ice berg. Production companies will continue to go to the rental companies where they can get everything at once. For reference a look at the perhaps biggest rental company might give some perspective: https://www.arrirental.com/en https://www.arrirental.com/en
devindotcom 5y ago
There's a lot of rental but the real scarcity is in certain lenses, which don't really become obsolete in the same way. Arri puts out a new Alexa and you can maybe get one if you have a hundred grand in your pocket, but there are some master primes or legacy sets that are simply not for sale.
- dylan604 5y ago
  The lenses Kubrick used for Barry Lyndon are prime examples. pun intended
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Surely legacy lenses can be reproduced (or modelled digitally!) so that it is impossible to tell the difference. For the component lenses don't you 'just' use the same refractive index and make it the same shape? We can make microchips for a few quid but a metal tube with a few small lumps of shaped glass costs 10,000 times as much? Seems unlikely. Is it a fashion thing, like unless it has the right logo on the lens body then the producers reject it?
  - zakary 5y ago
    Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. A lot of these lenses are expensive not just due to rarity but from the shear complexity and difficulty in producing them. Some can take literally months of production time. They frequently contain dozens of pieces of specialised glass which are ground to tolerances measured in nanometers. The way the light interacts with these lenses is simply not something that you can simulate. At least not on anything less than a decent sized supercomputer. And the reason you want one of these expensive lenses, is that they can do things that other lenses physically cannot and can never be persuaded to do. The famous Carl Zeiss Planar 50 mm f0. 7 lens used in Barry Lyndon is special because it can physically let more light into your camera than any other lens. That’s why nasa commissioned a set of them from Zeiss to use in filming the moon landing.
    - ryandamm 5y ago
      I believe it's the other way around: Kubrick got a version of the NASA lens modified to accept a Mitchell mount so he could put it on a 35mm motion film camera. He only used it for the candlelight scene because he had to remove the spinning mirror assembly used for monitoring, so they were shooting blind. Don't remember the sources for the anecdote, sorry. But the wikipedia page corresponds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_Planar_50mm_f/0.7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_Planar_50mm_f/0.7
o_m 5y ago
They rent, usually in the country where they are filming. I worked as a contractor making am ecommerce-like website for renting high-end movie making equipment.
stephen_g 5y ago
You could maybe do a deal with a bigger outfit to contribute some capital for some gear and get a cut when they rent it? But for having your own rental company (for the kind of people you want to rent to), you need to invest in lot of gear because they want to hire as much as possible from as few places as possible. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in cameras, accessories, lenses (especially important), lights, rigging gear etc.
dylan604 5y ago
The old saying was you buy the lenses, rent the camera. It's even more applicable today. Camera bodies change almost annually, but the lenses can carry over from body to body. However, in feature film work, some lens collections can easily cost $250,000 for a set of 6 lenses (Leica Sumicron-C). Cooke lenses could reach $100k. So, not many people owned these either. You just rent. You then get to write all of it off as an expense on the budget of the production. Camera gear used to be so expensive that few owned.
Turing_Machine 5y ago
My FIL (a serious amateur photographer) regularly rents specialty lenses from http://lensrentals.com http://lensrentals.com They rent cameras too, not just lenses. The RED Raven model (one of the NetFlix approved models) rents for $490/week. That's just for the "body" (what RED calls the "brain"). A full kit with accessories is $850/week. Lenses are on top of that.
mschuster91 5y ago
> Do studios and creators own these cameras or they usually rent? Depends. Some of the gear mentioned on the Netflix page can be afforded even by ambitioned hobbyists, others - especially the lenses - are way too expensive for anyone sans big studios. Major studios will have a selection of their own equipment, but rent from companies like ARRI (who, coincidentally or not, make their own cameras of which some are rent-only) for projects requiring more than that - or anything on location in foreign countries. It's easier to call up Arri and have them and their local offices deal with cameras, lighting equipment and the likes than to ship all that stuff around the world, deal with customs etc. > Is there an aggregated marketplace where I could be able to put my camera for rent if I do eventually get one? In Germany there's gearo, no idea about any other.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ryandamm 5y ago
Don't do it. Cameras and lenses are a low margin, high labor industry. Professionals are exceptionally picky about their gear, so you need skilled technicians working hard to keep your gear in top shape, and the prices are very low. The bigger rental houses make all their money on other things -- the ROI on sandbags, sound blankets, even consumables is ridiculous compared to cameras. (Granted I'm blending grip and camera, but some houses do both.) You're also competing with owner/operators, and even in-house studio operations. It doesn't scale -- relationships matter and it's highly regional. Compared to other ways to put your capital to work, it's not a great investment.

by chirau 5y ago

colechristensen 5y ago

I’ve seen people try to make “uber for camera rental”, I’m not sure if any of them succeeded. Most photography specialized retailers rent equipment. I think there’s a good mix between rent and own as there’s a lot of diversity in creators.

wmf 5y ago
It went horribly wrong when people realized that theft is easy and it wasn't covered by insurance. https://www.documentary.org/column/peer-peer-rental-cautionary-tale-plus-using-nonfiction-work-inspiration https://www.documentary.org/column/peer-peer-rental-cautiona...

nerdbaggy 5y ago

PRG is one of the biggest in the US for camera rentals, its rather unexciting. They have all the cameras, but for whatever reason most of them you have to specifically ask for. https://prggear.com/product-category/camera/camera-camera/camera-large-sensor/ https://prggear.com/product-category/camera/camera-camera/ca...

pvarangot 5y ago

It's not a bad gig but you need contacts and one of your primary competitors is a camera manufacturer, I think it was Panavision that has a big rental branch (and they rent Arri or Red too I think).

idhqbfojqbx 5y ago

Renting out cameras might give you influencers or youtubers as customers, but for producing a feature film or a TV show the rentals include everything from lights,lenses to generator trucks, with the camera only being the very tip of the ice berg. Production companies will continue to go to the rental companies where they can get everything at once. For reference a look at the perhaps biggest rental company might give some perspective: https://www.arrirental.com/en https://www.arrirental.com/en

devindotcom 5y ago

There's a lot of rental but the real scarcity is in certain lenses, which don't really become obsolete in the same way. Arri puts out a new Alexa and you can maybe get one if you have a hundred grand in your pocket, but there are some master primes or legacy sets that are simply not for sale.

dylan604 5y ago
The lenses Kubrick used for Barry Lyndon are prime examples. pun intended
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
Surely legacy lenses can be reproduced (or modelled digitally!) so that it is impossible to tell the difference. For the component lenses don't you 'just' use the same refractive index and make it the same shape? We can make microchips for a few quid but a metal tube with a few small lumps of shaped glass costs 10,000 times as much? Seems unlikely. Is it a fashion thing, like unless it has the right logo on the lens body then the producers reject it?
- zakary 5y ago
  Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. A lot of these lenses are expensive not just due to rarity but from the shear complexity and difficulty in producing them. Some can take literally months of production time. They frequently contain dozens of pieces of specialised glass which are ground to tolerances measured in nanometers. The way the light interacts with these lenses is simply not something that you can simulate. At least not on anything less than a decent sized supercomputer. And the reason you want one of these expensive lenses, is that they can do things that other lenses physically cannot and can never be persuaded to do. The famous Carl Zeiss Planar 50 mm f0. 7 lens used in Barry Lyndon is special because it can physically let more light into your camera than any other lens. That’s why nasa commissioned a set of them from Zeiss to use in filming the moon landing.
  - ryandamm 5y ago
    I believe it's the other way around: Kubrick got a version of the NASA lens modified to accept a Mitchell mount so he could put it on a 35mm motion film camera. He only used it for the candlelight scene because he had to remove the spinning mirror assembly used for monitoring, so they were shooting blind. Don't remember the sources for the anecdote, sorry. But the wikipedia page corresponds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_Planar_50mm_f/0.7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_Planar_50mm_f/0.7

o_m 5y ago

They rent, usually in the country where they are filming. I worked as a contractor making am ecommerce-like website for renting high-end movie making equipment.

stephen_g 5y ago

You could maybe do a deal with a bigger outfit to contribute some capital for some gear and get a cut when they rent it? But for having your own rental company (for the kind of people you want to rent to), you need to invest in lot of gear because they want to hire as much as possible from as few places as possible. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in cameras, accessories, lenses (especially important), lights, rigging gear etc.

dylan604 5y ago

The old saying was you buy the lenses, rent the camera. It's even more applicable today. Camera bodies change almost annually, but the lenses can carry over from body to body. However, in feature film work, some lens collections can easily cost $250,000 for a set of 6 lenses (Leica Sumicron-C). Cooke lenses could reach $100k. So, not many people owned these either. You just rent. You then get to write all of it off as an expense on the budget of the production. Camera gear used to be so expensive that few owned.

Turing_Machine 5y ago

My FIL (a serious amateur photographer) regularly rents specialty lenses from http://lensrentals.com http://lensrentals.com They rent cameras too, not just lenses. The RED Raven model (one of the NetFlix approved models) rents for $490/week. That's just for the "body" (what RED calls the "brain"). A full kit with accessories is $850/week. Lenses are on top of that.

mschuster91 5y ago

> Do studios and creators own these cameras or they usually rent? Depends. Some of the gear mentioned on the Netflix page can be afforded even by ambitioned hobbyists, others - especially the lenses - are way too expensive for anyone sans big studios. Major studios will have a selection of their own equipment, but rent from companies like ARRI (who, coincidentally or not, make their own cameras of which some are rent-only) for projects requiring more than that - or anything on location in foreign countries. It's easier to call up Arri and have them and their local offices deal with cameras, lighting equipment and the likes than to ship all that stuff around the world, deal with customs etc. > Is there an aggregated marketplace where I could be able to put my camera for rent if I do eventually get one? In Germany there's gearo, no idea about any other.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ryandamm 5y ago

Don't do it. Cameras and lenses are a low margin, high labor industry. Professionals are exceptionally picky about their gear, so you need skilled technicians working hard to keep your gear in top shape, and the prices are very low. The bigger rental houses make all their money on other things -- the ROI on sandbags, sound blankets, even consumables is ridiculous compared to cameras. (Granted I'm blending grip and camera, but some houses do both.) You're also competing with owner/operators, and even in-house studio operations. It doesn't scale -- relationships matter and it's highly regional. Compared to other ways to put your capital to work, it's not a great investment.