Buy the Camera or Rent It?
Episode 9 of 10
We bought a Ronin 2 for shots we ended up needing twice in a year. Here’s the test we use now.
More on this: video equipment rentals in San Francisco.
Transcript
We bought a Ronin 2 because we were excited about car to bike tracking shots and some handheld work. In the year that followed we had two shoots that needed it. Two. That purchase taught us more about buying gear than anything that went right.
So we run a test now, and it doesn’t start with the price.
It starts with how often you’d genuinely use the thing. Our rough line is once a month for an expensive item, twice a month for a cheaper one. Be honest, because the answer you want is not the answer you’ll get. Excitement about one upcoming shoot is not a usage pattern, and that’s exactly the trap the Ronin was.
Then run the other version of that sum. How many times would you have to rent this out before it paid for itself? Say the number out loud. If it sounds unrealistic, it is.
Only then does price matter, and it matters differently at different scales. A three hundred dollar gimbal is a decision you make once. Something in the five to ten thousand range and up is a cash flow question, and you need an actual plan for paying it off. Financing gear you use twice a year is how small production companies end up in debt for equipment sitting in a cupboard.
Price matters differently at different scales, and this is where people get into trouble. A three hundred dollar gimbal is a decision you make once and forget. Something in the five to ten thousand range and up is a cash flow question.
You need a plan for paying that off before you buy, not after. A credit card is a plan. A business loan is a plan. Hoping the work shows up isn’t, and financing a light you use twice a year is how small production companies end up carrying debt for equipment sitting in a cupboard.
There’s one more question that decides it more often than any of the above, and almost nobody asks it. Is your DP an owner operator? Because if the person shooting your jobs already owns the thing, you’re about to buy a second one. That sounds obvious written down. It is not obvious at the point where you’re excited about a piece of kit.
There’s a real argument on the other side, and it’s convenience. Owning means no ordering, no insuring, no pickup, no sending a PA across town, which is a cost you’re paying whether or not it shows on an invoice. And your settings stay put. Every rental means resetting button mappings, audio levels, light intensities. That’s time, every single shoot.
Then there’s the cost you don’t see on any invoice, which is your own time. Every rental is an order, an insurance line, a pickup and a return. You can send a production assistant, and that’s another cost. Multiply it across every shoot in a year and it stops being trivial.
The settings are the part people forget entirely. Rent the same camera four times and you’ll set up the same button mappings four times. Same with audio levels, same with light intensities. On a shoot day that’s ten minutes you didn’t plan for, at the exact moment you least want to be reading a menu.
So the honest version is this. Buy the thing you touch constantly and rent the thing you’re excited about. We had that backwards once and it cost us.
We’re Luma Creative in San Francisco. We crew up around the Bay all year and we rent gear, so if you’re working out here, find us at lumacreative.com.