Rent Your Glass

Photography is an expensive hobby. Yes, camera prices keep going down, but it’s a different story when you’re talking about lenses.

If you shoot for a living, you can probably justify spending thousands of dollars on equipment. Even better, you might have a whole array of lenses already at your disposal.

The rest of us, however, are left with a bad case of gear lust.

It’s a good thing you can rent lenses from companies like Rentglass, ZipLens, and Lens Pro to Go. They offer Nikon and Canon lenses for roughly $20 to $50 a week and ship all over the US. If you’re in Canada, you can go to Lens Lenders instead. All you have to do is fill out the online form, provide a credit card number, and wait for the package.

This is perfect if you need a special lens that you’ll probably hardly ever use otherwise – say a super telephoto, or a tilt/shift lens.

This is also a great way to evaluate a lens you’ve been lusting for. Rent it for a week, see if you like it, and make your decision after. This way, you won’t end up having a thousand-dollar dust collector.

So what are you waiting for? Satisfy your gear lust and rent the lens you want.

—Luis Cruz

Comments

[SC Photography]

I've used Lens Lender's in the past and I've found them very good.

[Andrew Ferguson]

I haven't used any of the online lens rental places yet, but I've had great experience renting locally. Here in Vancouver, Canada I rent from a local shop called Leo's Camera.

Great selection, good rates, I'm very happy with them.

Actually, I wrote a similar article to this on renting glass but a bit longer. If you're interested, you can read it at:

http://www.goldengod.net/2007/01/19/the-pros-and-cons-of-renting-camera-equipment/