I own one camera and a small LED panel, and the job pays enough that either route works on paper. I have never used a rental house and I do not know what they will ask for, and part of me wants to just buy the light because I will use it again. There is a week between now and the shoot, so I have time to collect or to learn a new piece of kit, but not both.
Rental pricing has a convention worth knowing: many houses charge roughly a three-day rate for a full week, so a two-day job and a five-day job can cost surprisingly similar amounts. That changes the calculation if you can pick the kit up on Friday and prep over the weekend. My rule for buying is that it has to appear on more than a third of my jobs, otherwise the money is better spent on the thing I use every single time.
Whatever you rent, collect it a day early and actually build the setup at home. I rented a body that looked identical on paper to mine, then discovered on set that its picture profile did not match and the two angles graded differently in every cutaway. That cost me four hours of colour work and a bad night. Twenty minutes of test footage at home would have caught it.
Shoot a grey card and a face on both bodies during that test. It turns an unpleasant surprise into a one-click correction later.
Rent the camera, buy the light. The second body is a matching problem you only have on this job, while a decent light is on every job you will ever shoot and it does not go obsolete in the way bodies do. Rental houses will normally want proof of insurance or a card hold, so ring them today rather than the afternoon before — that is the step that catches first timers out.
Depends entirely on the house and on your policy wording, so ask both directly. Mine wanted a certificate naming them, and my broker issued it in a day once I asked for exactly that.
Insurance is the bit I had no idea about. Is that a specific production policy or does normal business cover do it?
@hollis_pike · 6mo ago
Own your consumables, rent your capital. Batteries, cards, cables, stands and sandbags are cheap, always needed, and miserable to be short of on a Tuesday morning. Bodies, big lights and long lenses can stay someone else's depreciation problem until a job actually demands them twice in a row.
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