A constant wish amongst our customers is cheaper shipping. Today, we’re happy to announce our new subscription shipping program. This program will allow our customers to rent whatever they want, whenever they want, without having to worry about high shipping prices.

What is LensRentals HD?

LensRentals HD is a shipping discount program. By signing up, you’ll get free Standard Shipping on all the orders you place for one year, and you’ll even save 50% on all FedEx Overnight shipping.

No items are excluded from the program: if we carry it, we’ll ship it free. Need a jib in Los Angeles? It’s free. Need 10 tripods in Miami? Totally free.

Who is LensRentals HD For?

Everyone that wants cheaper shipping to the contiguous US. (Sorry HI & AK!)

At only $79 a year, LensRentals HD makes sense for everyone. Only rent a few small orders per year? You’ll still save money with LensRentals HD. You only expect to place a single large order this year? You’ll still save. You rent all the time? You’ll save even more.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Standard Shipping?

  Standard Shipping is the most cost-effective FedEx service that will arrive by your selected arrival date — assuming there is a FedEx service that can arrive by that date other than FedEx Overnight. Standard Shipping may take the form of FedEx Ground, FedEx Express Saver or FedEx 2nd Day Air.

• What about UPS?

  Because we only ship via UPS upon customer request, we do not have sufficient volume to offer LensRentals HD on UPS shipments. If you select a UPS shipping service, you will receive no LensRentals HD discount.

• Can I share my LensRentals HD subscription?

  For now, we are unable to allow a single LensRentals HD subscription to be shared across multiple accounts. However, some businesses with multiple employee accounts may qualify for special pricing. Please contact us for more details.

• Can I cancel LensRentals HD?

  You can cancel LensRentals HD before your first discounted order is shipped. Once your first discounted order is shipped, LensRentals HD is non-refundable.

]]> http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/03/introducing-lensrentals-hd/feed 23 http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/02/were-hiring-2 http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/02/were-hiring-2#comments Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:03:59 +0000 Drew Cicala http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/?p=12569 Lensrentals is an awesome place to work, and we’re looking for some new people to join our team. We offer great benefits for our employees, including health/dental/vision insurance, 401(k), paid vacation and free equipment rentals, combined with a fun & extremely casual work environment.

To apply, email your resume to: jobs@lensrentals.com

Packer

Location: Memphis, TN

We are looking for a packer to join our team. As a member of our packing department, your work is the last step in the process of getting an order ready for our customers. As such, an attention to detail and an ability to work fast and under pressure are both extremely critical.

Requirements:

• Punctuality
• Extreme attention to detail
• Great memory/memorization
• Ability to work under pressure and/or deadlines
• Ability to do repetitive tasks without going insane
• Ability to stand for long periods of time and lift up to 50 lbs

Manager

Location: Memphis or Nashville, TN

We are looking for a manager to join our team. As a manager, you’ll be the designated problem solver for a group of our employees. Leadership and problem-solving are absolute musts.

Requirements:

• BA/BS required
• Prior management experience, preferably in a retail or customer service setting, with former employer references available to discuss performance from within the last two years.
• Knowledge of, and/or experience with, professional photography equipment and/or professional video equipment

Know you need gear for a future date? Reserve it early and get 10% off!

• Place your order 7 days in advance
• For any arrival date before 3/1/13
• Using the code EARLYBIRD
• Get 10% off your rental fees!

Lensrentals 2013 Customer Survey

Happy Holidays! Our holiday hours are as follows:

• December 24th: Close at 2:00 PM CT
• December 25th: Closed!
• December 31st: Regular hours
• January 1st: Closed!

]]> http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/12/holiday-hours/feed 3 http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/05/weve-changed-new-site http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/05/weve-changed-new-site#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 13:46:14 +0000 Drew Cicala http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/?p=6624 You may have noticed things look a little bit different around here. Welcome!

As always, it is our goal to be the best rental company in the business. As part of that, we want to have the easiest to use and all-around best website of any rental company. So, over the past two years since our last iteration of our site went live, we’ve gathered feedback from all of our customers about what they liked and what they didn’t like about our site. For the past six months, we’ve put a lot of work in redesigning our site from the ground up, to fix the things that people don’t like, and to make the well received features of our site even better.

Navigation

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback that the top-button navigation system on the old version of the site was confusing or difficult to navigate. We’ve moved the navigation from the top to the left side of the screen. To navigate, simply select your camera system, and then proceed through the categories as you did on our old site.

At any point, should you want to choose a different camera system to navigate to, simply click the name of the current camera system to be presented with the list of all camera systems.

Filtering & Sorting

Another common point of feedback we’ve received is that, because we now carry so many products, it can be difficult to narrow down your selection to just a few products. To improve upon this, we’ve added filtering options. Our filters will work whether you’ve accessed a list of products through our regular navigation, or if you’ve used the search function of our site.

At this time, the filtering categories are mostly lens-specific such as focal length, maximum aperture, and active stabilization. We hope to expand the filtering choices to other product options in the future.

We’ve also added the ability to sort a list of products by different attributes such as weekly price, popularity, newness, or focal length.

Product Pages

We know how much everyone loves the large amount of information we try and give you on each product, whether it is Roger’s Take, MTF charts, or detailed specifications. We also know how much everyone hates how long and disorganized all this information has made some of our pages. That’s why we’ve added tabs to our pages, allowing you easy access to all the information available, if you need it, without cluttering up the page if you don’t.

Shipping

Along with the new site, we’ve changed our default shipping carrier to FedEx, as well as changed our shipping speeds on some orders. Rest assured, whether our site tells you your order is going to ship via Next Day Air, 2nd Day Air, 3rd Day Select or Ground, your order is guaranteed to arrive on the date you selected, just like before.

Since we know some of you prefer UPS, UPS shipping will always be available, for a slight extra charge (it costs us a bit more to ship UPS, so we have to charge a bit more). Simply change your shipping method using the drop-down menu during checkout.

As always, we have support available via phone, email and chat during business hours (8:00 AM – 5:00 PM CT), and email support available after-hours and on the weekend if you run into any problems with our new site, or simply can’t find what you are looking for. Contact us at any time!

Ever since the DSLR video boom began, we’ve had tons of our long-time photography customers ask us for advice on putting together equipment packages for live event videography. Because they truly are experts in guiding beginning videographers, We’ve been hounding Drew and Chad to prepare some tips and recommended packages for us to give to our customers.

Canon 5D Mk II vs. Canon 7D

Because these are the two most popular Canon DSLRs for videography, we commonly get asked for advice by customers who want to begin shooting DSLR video and don’t know which camera is right for them. For the first video in our series, Chad has created this fantastic video that really highlights some of the key differences between the cameras.

Live Event Videography Packages

Chad and Drew have put together a few packages for us, as well. These packages are their recommendations for a complete setup for general live event videography for both 1 and 2 person crews.

1 Man Crew

3 - Canon 7D’s (or Canon 5D Mk II’s)

1 – Canon 35mm f/1.4L

2 – Canon 70-200 f/2.8L

3 – Additional Canon LP-E6 Batteries

6 – Compact Flash 32GB UDMA Cards

1 – Manfrotto 561B-HDV Monopod

1 – Lowel DV Creator Kit

1 – Zoom H4n

2 – Sennheiser Evolution G3 100 Wireless Mics

1 – Rode VideoMic Pro

Add the entire kit to your cart

Suggested Extras

1 – Canon 50mm f/1.2L

1 – Zeiss ZE 85mm f/1.4

1 – Canon 135mm f/2L

1 – Kessler Pocket Dolly

Add the extras to your cart

2 Man Crew

3 - Canon 7D’s (or Canon 5D Mk II’s)

2 – Canon 35mm f/1.4L

2 - Canon 70-200 f/2.8L

3 – Additional Canon LP-E6 Batteries

6 – Compact Flash 32GB UDMA Cards

2 – Manfrotto 561B-HDV Monopod

1 – Lowel DV Creator Kit

1 – Zoom H4n

2 – Sennheiser Evolution G3 100 Wireless Mics

2 – Rode VideoMic Pro

Add the entire kit to your cart

2 Man Crew with the Works

3 - Canon 7D’s (or Canon 5D Mk II’s)

2 – Canon 35mm f/1.4L

2 - Canon 70-200 f/2.8L

1 – Canon 50mm f/1.2L

1 - Zeiss ZE 85mm f/1.4

1 - Canon 135mm f/2L

3 – Additional Canon LP-E6 Batteries

8 – Compact Flash 32GB UDMA Cards

2 – Manfrotto 561B-HDV Monopod

1 – Lowel DV Creator Kit

1 – Zoom H4n

2 – Sennheiser Evolution G3 100 Wireless Mics

2 – Rode VideoMic Pro

Add the entire kit to your cart

A History of Photography

Roger has two loves: history and photography. Over the past 18 months, he has combined his two loves into an incredible series documenting the development of early lenses and cameras. These articles are thorough, but not boring, and often feature Roger’s humor as well as his love of puns. Enjoy!

History of Lenses

Cooking with Glass

Well, since I’ve titled my other two “History of Lenses” articles with puns, I figured I’d continue the trend. Although I’ll admit this is the worst. But I loves me some puns.

Who Invented the Telephoto Lens?

Despite the numerous requests, (OK, it was 3. But 3 is a number, therefore I can call it numerous if I want to) I still wasn’t going to write about the development of telephoto lenses. Except that all three people who said “so and so first developed the telephoto lens” were wrong. None of them named the person who first made telephoto photographs.

The Development of Wide Angle Lenses

Wide angle lenses are even more different from standard lenses than telephoto lenses are, so I just couldn’t rest until I’d covered the development of wide-angle lenses too. The last major lens development will wait a while longer. (I know you’re thinking Lensbabies are the last major lens development, but actually I’m referring to zoom lenses.)

History of Cameras

The Chemists, The Potter, and The Aristocrat: Imaging Before the Photograph

Since I started my articles on the early development of photographic lenses, I’ve been wanting to write an article on the development of the first cameras. The early days are so much more fun to write about, back when photographic advances were about people rather than corporations.

The Showman, The Sheriff, and the First Cameras

In my last article, we discussed the first image makers, up until the late 1820s when Niepce had actually been able to make images using a camera obscura and silver plates coated with Bitumen of Judea. On his way to England, Niepce had been introduced to a most interesting man, Louis Daguerre, probably by Charles Chevalier, the lensmaker they both used.

1839 and the Frenzy That Followed

By the middle of January, news of Daguerre’s invention had spread around the world. The actual techniques used remained secret, however, as the French government had not yet officially agreed to buy the invention from Daguerre, but the fact that photographs had been made and exhibited caused a frenzy everywhere.

Lens Variation

Notes on Lens and Camera Variation

A funny thing happened when I opened Lensrentals and started getting 6 or 10 copies of each lens: I found out they weren’t all the same. Not quite. And each of those copies behaved a bit different on different cameras.

The Limits of Variation

A few people were more than a little amused that I, the ultimate pixel-peeper, wrote an article demonstrating that all lenses and all cameras vary a bit; that you can’t find the ultimately sharpest lens.  Each individual copy of a given lens is a little different from the other copies. A single copy will behave a little differently on different cameras. Even on the same camera, autofocus the same shot a dozen times and the results will be slightly different.  So people started asking me ”If there’s variation, then what’s the sense in taking all those measurements?”

Other Fantastic Articles

The LensRentals Cleaning Method

There are some articles I try hard to avoid writing. Politics, religion, the so-called benefits of UV filters and other things that get Fanboys riled up I avoid like the plague. So for two years, while people have asked over-and-over for me to write an article on how we clean lenses, I’ve politely refused. I’ve seen what happens to such discussions on forums

Good Times With Bad Filters

Anyway, one of the techs has to clean all those filters, make sure the threads are OK, and test them out. Honestly nobody likes to do it, so it gets put off until we need some filters or there’s just nothing else to do. So the other day Kenny is cleaning filters and testing the threads by mounting them one in front of the other until he made a nice mountain of 50 UV filters.

Reflections on Reflections. Coatings: The Most Important Part of Your Lens

Reflection is an interesting word with many meanings. To a philosopher it means careful or considerable thought on a subject. To an anatomist it means a structure that bends back along the path it came from. To a narcissist it’s their image in a mirror. To a photographer it usually means subjects mirrored in water, ice, or glass.

The Apocalypse of Lens Dust

Every lens has dust inside and you can almost never see it in a picture (99% of the time you can’t). But obviously there must be some point where dust is either big enough or there’s just enough of it to become visible, otherwise we could fill our lenses with mud and then go take pictures.

Baby Roger says Happy New Year!

2011 has been an eventful year, both for us here at LensRentals, and for the photography industry as a whole. In case you’ve been asleep for the whole year, we thought it would be helpful to create a series of blog posts documenting what the heck happened this year. We’ll start with a post about what happened here at LensRentals in 2011.

2011 Changes at LensRentals

One thing that makes this a really awesome business to be a part of is our relationship with our customers. Unlike a lot of businesses, we really love getting to know our customers, and making them part of the LensRentals family. As part of that, we are always as open as we can be about changes we make around here. As part of that, we want to update everyone on what we’ve accomplished here this year, and what we have changed (hopefully for the better!).

Moving

First off, we moved. Unlike in past years when we have expanded our office space, this year we finally broke down and moved into an entirely new location that is better suited to our business rather than continuing to expand in our former building. Amazingly, we were able to move our entire operation, including thousands and thousands of inventory items starting on a Friday night, and were completely moved in and ready for business on Monday morning.

While the need for extra space was a primary reason we moved, an even more important reason we moved is because our current space is much more suited to our operations. By being able to group all of the departments involved in our outgoing operation into one giant room, we’ve been able to create a more efficient operation. In our new setup, it often takes less than 15 minutes from the time you place the order for us to approve, bill, pull, clean, inspect, pack and ship your order. It is also structured to have the fewest opportunities for mistakes to happen (outside of replacing our employees with robots) so that the already small chance that we might make a mistake with your order has been lowered even further.

Quality Assurance

We have always strived to have the highest quality in the industry. For instance, we’ve always inspected and tested our equipment both when it comes back from a prior order, and again before it goes out on a new order. We’ve also always sold our lenses on a set schedule, rather than continuing to repair and rent old equipment with a significant chance of failure, unlike other firms.

We challenged ourselves to find ways to improve our quality even further in 2011. The first thing we did is purchase and set-up a computerized testing system. This allows us to identify and repair lenses that have begun to develop issues, but haven’t degraded to the point to where these issues are obvious to the naked eye in our normal optical testing. Since in many cases, lenses will continue to degrade once they develop these issues, this has allowed us to repair lenses before they cause an issue for a renter, rather than having to wait until the problem becomes bad enough to notice through normal use or testing.

Lastly, we’ve also substantially increased our equipment purchasing, so that our fleet of lenses is younger, on average, than it ever has been before. This has also helped us ensure that we put higher quality equipment in your hand that is less likely to fail or give you any problems during the course of your rental.

Pricing

We try and do things the right way around here, even if doing the right thing isn’t always the most profitable thing. Rather than looking at what competing firms price their rentals at, we develop our own prices using an internally developed pricing model. It isn’t our goal to try and squeeze every cent out of our customers, but rather, we want to offer prices that are both fair to us and fair to you. This fall, we realized that some assumptions we included in our pricing model weren’t entirely accurate. When we adjusted the model, we found out we were underpricing some items, but many items were actually overpriced. Rather than continue to charge the higher prices that were very successful for us, we lowered our prices, because it was the fair thing to do.

Our 2012 Resolutions

We want to be the best company you’ve ever dealt with. Because of that, we are always striving for improvement. We’ve identified several goals for 2012, and rather than keep them to ourselves until we are ready to implement them, we want to go ahead and share them with you, so that you know we are still working hard to get even better.

A Better Website

The current iteration of our website is less than two years old. However, it was created for a simpler time with a simpler product mix. We know it is sometimes difficult to find certain items using our current navigation. We also know that sometimes we give you so much information on a product that it can overload your senses. We are in the process of completely redeveloping our site and hope to have a faster, easier to use, and more feature-rich site for you soon.

Longer Hours

We know that our 4 PM CT shipping cutoff can be frustrating, especially for our west coast customers. We are currently working towards being able to offer longer hours for you at some point in the near future.

Services

It seems like every day a customer asks us to test their lens, repair their lens, or clean their camera sensor. We are flattered that everyone thinks so highly of our quality that you’d want us to work on your equipment, and we really want to help. There are some logistical issues that we have to work out (you sending us your lens instead of us sending you our lens is kind of the opposite of what we are used to), but as soon as we can get those things figured out, we are going to start offering these things in some capacity.

Friggin’ Awesome Service

We think we already have the best customer service around, and we are committed to continuing it. We promise you’ll always get a live person when you call, instead of an automated system. You’ll always get fast, concise answers to your questions. We’ll continue to have someone monitor our emails even at night and on the weekend to ensure we are there to help if you encounter any difficulties. In 2012, we’ll continue to find new ways to deliver even better service than in 2011!