Top Rented Photo and Video Products of 2024

We review our rental data each year around this time to identify the most popular gear rented throughout the calendar year. As one of the largest rental houses globally, we believe this insight can reveal important trends in the photography and videography equipment industry and help us anticipate future developments. We’ve done this for several years now, and it’s always an interesting way to look through rentals to see how the industry might be changing. We have a wealth of data to analyze, so let’s explore the most popular gear from 2024.

As mentioned in previous years, we will often parse some of the data to provide a more interesting look into what gear was most commonly rented each year. This year is no exception, and actually, the Sony NP-FZ100 battery outrented the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 II by a couple of hundred rental orders. This is no surprise, as I believe the same battery was in the top three last year, then it’s commonly recommended to order a couple extra batteries with your camera order, especially if you’re using mirrorless camera bodies.

But what is perhaps more exciting and interesting is that an EF mount lens has cleared the top of the list for this year, beating its RF counterparts by 100 or so orders. The rest of the list is exactly what you might expect if you’ve seen these lists in previous years. While we love the weird and obscure lenses and cameras, ultimately, what will usually beat out everything else is the practical. Canon won the race once again this year, taking over a significant portion of the top 10 rentals. The most rented camera this year was the Canon EOS R5, followed by the Canon EOS R6 Mark II. Sony was able to make the list with their Sony Alpha A7S III – but was still beaten out by the Canon 5D Mark IV – a camera released in 2016. To get a stronger comparison of how things have changed from 2023, let’s look at our top 20 list from last year.

Looking at last year’s list reveals quite a few surprises. Most notably, last year was dominated heavily by Canon’s R series of mirrorless cameras. This year, however, saw a resurgence of their DSLRs and EF-mounted lenses. Is this some pushback from the mirrorless cameras? Or is this just some nostalgia for the bigger, bulkier, and louder camera systems? I suppose we’ll know more next year.

Moving down the line, let’s look at brand market share, which brands are growing, and which ones are shrinking based on their annual rental numbers.

Looking at these numbers, there is one very obvious change from previous years. Nikon has started scratching back at its market share, showing a 21% growth from last year. As B&H Photo highlighted in their recent post, Nikon has made a big push into its mirrorless platform, and it appears to be paying off. Moving away from Nikon, DJI also saw steady growth as drone operations became easier and easier over the recent years.

Perhaps the most surprising comes from RED’s fall from grace. It has been a slow year for RED and new camera releases but also a slow year for large productions in general. Film and TV productions are down nearly 40% in 2024 as Hollywood still recovers from both the pandemic and labor union strikes. With short-form media like TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts rising considerably in viewership, the need for large production cameras has slowed down significantly this year.

As you can see from our most rented gear list above, though, we rent lenses more than cameras, so let’s look at just the lens brand market shares for 2024.

Browsing the numbers above, you can see that Canon has shown its continued domination in our rental data, with a 4.61% growth over an already impressive 2023. Sony and Nikon have also shown nice growth, whereas all other brands experienced declining rental numbers. Is this a mark of bad news for third-party lens developers? Or is it just an anomaly within trends? It’s hard to say right now, as brands like Tamron, Sigma, and others work to develop lenses for this recent transition into mirrorless cameras.

Staying on the topic of lenses, let’s look at some of the numbers regarding lens mounts. Nikon and Canon both have some segmentation within their lens lineups. They continue to develop lenses for mirrorless cameras while discontinuing their previous legacy lineups, so how is that trending? Let’s take a look.

Looking at the lens mount data, you’ll see that Canon’s RF mount leads the race, with Sony’s E mount and Nikon’s Z mount following a ways behind. Canon’s EF lens mount has declined overall but is still putting up incredibly impressive numbers when you consider they haven’t been developing for that lens mount for a few years now. It’s hard to say whether that is because they are generally cheaper than their RF counterparts or some other anomaly. But when compared to the Nikon F mount numbers, it’s pretty shocking to see how well the EF lineup is still doing.

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This concludes our first look at the stats for 2024. Did any of these numbers surprise you? Feel free to chime in in the comments below. Stay tuned, as we’ll have a couple more pieces of data we’re excited to share with you—particularly sales numbers from our used department and new products. The staff will pick their favorites for the year as well in an upcoming article.