The Top Rented Cameras and Lenses of 2022

Each year, we go back through our data of rentals, and present to you which products are the most rented gear for that year. To us, it feels like a good judgment of the industry, as we’re one of the world’s largest rental houses for lenses and cameras. Parsing this data, and comparing it to previous years, gives us a really in-depth look at industry trends and what we can expect from upcoming years. If you’re a frequent reader of our blog, you know the routine, so let’s jump into the numbers, and look at the most popular photo and video products for 2022.

As you can see, for the second year in a row, the Canon EOS R5 has topped our list as the most rented camera. For those who have used this incredible camera, this should come as no surprise, as it’s one of the flagships of the industry leader in cameras and lenses. However, when you start digging through the list a little further, there are a few surprises.

Most notably, we finally have a RED camera in the top twenty, with the RED Komodo 6K. In previous years, the list has been dominated by Canon and Sony gear – with this year being no exception – so it’s nice to see RED finally claim a much-deserved spot in the top twenty. Aside from the RED KOMODO 6K, there are a number of video-focused cameras in the top twenty, most notably the Canon C70, and the Sony FX3 both scratching the top ten. This is no surprise as video platforms have become more of a focus in the recent year, as YouTube and TikTok trended upwards, and Instagram trending downward (despite their newfound focus on video).

Another surprise is the holdout against the mirrorless standard, with several EF lenses maintaining their spots on the top twenty, and the Canon 5d Mark IV still holding its place at #8 – despite being over six years old at this point.

However, before we dive into all of our numbers, I think we should display our rental segments, to show you what gear is most often rented from us. So let’s dive into rental percentages based on gear type.

These stats are largely the same as in previous years and an excellent example of why ‘lens’ is in our name – the majority of our rentals are in fact lenses. While we rent thousands of cameras, lights, and accessories annually, lenses are still our bread and butter. However, one big difference from this year to last was an increase in lighting rentals, which we hope to continue for future years.

It’s also important to note that all rentals, regardless of the category increased last year, so while these percental changes may look small, it is an increase of hundreds to thousands of orders. Additionally, you may notice that these percentages don’t add up to 100% – that’s because there are many items that we rent that don’t fit into one of these categories, and they make up the remaining percentage points.

This brings us to our next topic of discussion – Camera Brands. Which camera brand reigned supreme this year? Well, let’s look at our analytics.

Canon still comfortably held on to its top place for 2022, with Sony gaining ground on the market share. From there, we see a pretty significant falloff of orders with Blackmagic and Nikon being the only two other brands achieving over 5% of our camera rentals – each of them falling a bit from last year’s market share. Perhaps what was most surprising to me was to see Leica continuing to outsell Fujifilm, despite Fujifilm being far more budget-friendly and in a similar camera body style as the Leica systems. Rounding out the bottom portion is 5 different video-focused cameras systems, with Insta360 actually beating its competitor GoPro.

Next let’s bring our attention to lenses, with brands staying as the focus. Which lens brands performed the best in 2022? Well, let us have a look.

Not a lot of surprise here either. Canon, much like with their camera bodies, maintained a strong lead over the competition when it came to lenses – which makes sense as they’re both a standard in photo, as well as video. Sigma lost some ground as they develop lenses for the RF mount, and Nikon continues to fall further in market share. However, many camera manufacturers have multiple lens mounts – one for their DSLR systems, and one for their mirrorless systems (as well as a number of mounts for crop sensors and so on). So let’s take a quick look at market shares based on lens mounts.

Not a lot to say here aside from that it is interesting to see the EF lenses are still on the top of the list. I was expecting the see RF lenses gain a bit more ground as new camera systems start developing the RF mounts for the cameras. However, EF has been a standard in video for years now, so the transition will take some time.

And that’s what we have for statistics for the year. Thank you to all those who have supported Lensrentals.com this year and in previous years. Did any of these stats surprise you? What lenses and cameras do you expect to breach the top 20 for next year? Please stay tuned next week, as we’ll be going through more numbers and showing you the best new products for 2022, as well as some staff picks as to what was their favorites from the year.

Related Reading

• The 2022 Guide to Video Batteries
• The Lensrentals Podcast Episode #54 – 2021 Wrap Party: Photo Industry Review
• Taking Apart the Canon EOS R5 Mirrorless Camera
• A Look at the Progression of the Canon Mirrorless Platform

Author: Lensrentals

Articles written by the entire editorial and technical staff at LensRentals.com. These articles are for when there is more than one author for the entire post, and are written as a community effort.