A camera lens rental company review

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to use a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens on a photo shoot that I had coming up , but I wasn’t prepared to spend the almost $1700 MSRP for a new one. Luckily now there are several lens rental companies that have sprung up to meet the needs of photogs like me who are getting started and realize the difference that a pro lens can make, but aren’t quite prepared to fork over that much dough.

Even renting such a lens costs more than the kit lens on your DSLR so I wanted to find a good company to rent from at the best price and service combination. As usual I researched several companies and I think I found a gem. More after the jump. . .

Camera lens rental is obviously a commodity business model. Most of the companies I looked at had very similar prices and terms. You can rent with or without insurance and the rental periods usually start at a week with extended periods available. Most of the websites of these companies also functioned very similarly. I think most of them operate out of a garage at their home, but that’s ok.

In the end I went with LensRentals.com. They are not the absolute least expensive, especially where I live because we’re in the same state so I had to pay sales tax. But the service was top notch. From reading their “about us” page I learned that they were located near Memphis TN which is only about three hours from here.

From order placement to receipt

LensRentals.com is one of the oldest if not the oldest lens rental company. The other thing that impressed me was that they bit the bullet and took the steps necessary to implement good business systems. They have custom software that tracks their inventory of lenses and it works. Here’s a quick workflow example:

• Shortly after I placed my order online I received an order confirmation email and then FedEx tracking information in another email.
• FedEx delivers the lens. The delivery requires a signature.
• Within a half hour of receipt, I got an email notifying me that the rental period had started.
• The email had instructions for returning the lens and the due date.
• The paid return shipping label was in the box.
• When LensRentals got the lens back I got an email that told me the transaction was completed.

A problem and how customer support handled it.

The day after I got the lens, I was showing it to my friend and fellow photographer, Kyle Johnson. To be honest, Kyle recommended LensRentals to me in the first place. Kyle shoots local high school sports and you can check out his work and buy sports photos on his website right here.

I had noticed an intermittent squeaking noise coming from the lens when I used it the first couple of times, but I did not notice the fact that it was focusing slower than it should have. Kyle picked up on that and suggested that I email LensRentals right away, so I did.

Actually I decided to use my Canon PowerShot SD750 compact to make a short video while Kyle operated the lens, and sent the video along with the email to customer support. That was at 2:50pm. At 3:05pm I got a reply email from one of their reps. The video helped them diagnose the problem. They would be sending out a replacement right away. By 3:08pm I had another order acceptance email from their system and by 3:14pm I had a tracking number email on the replacement lens which was shipped priority overnight.

Now admittedly, my sending a video to demonstrate the problem greatly sped up the diagnosis process (my arm hurts from patting myself on the back, by the way ;), but still you gotta admit that is fast service. The next day I got the replacement lens and it worked fine.

Three nuggets of advice

This is a long post, so to reward you for reading this far here are three pieces of advice:

1. Allow a couple of days lead time from when you actually need to use the lens.
2. Videos such as from a compact camera are worth a million words when motion and sound are involved. I had used this technique with a Canon printer that went bad about a year ago.
3. Don’t hesitate to use LensRentals.com

I also got very quick email response from LensRentals.com before I placed my order. BTW, I’m not receiving any kick backs for this review. I was genuinely pleased with the service.

I may as well throw in one small glitch. For the return shipping you can specify a USPS return label instead of FedEx. Since my nearest FedEx drop-off location is almost 20mi away I did just that. With the first lens I got a USPS return label, but with the replacement lens there was a FedEx label. I’m sure FedEx is the default and since it all happened so fast I am willing to forgive them for the very small oversight.

So there you have it. If you need to rent a pro lens check out LensRentals.com.

I plan to post about the event I shot with the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR. Stay tuned.

Brett