Equipment
Top Sales for Photo & Video Products for 2024
Last week, we highlighted some of the statistics from our rental inventory, showing you all which products are trending most and which products are the most popular from our inventory. But we don’t just have a rental inventory – we’ve also become a pretty large used marketplace for cameras, lenses, and accessories. And unlike previous years, we thought it might be worthwhile for our readers to share some of our sales data as well, as it highlights the gear that people felt that they had to own instead of just renting for a long weekend or two.
For those who don’t know, we offer sales on our website by switching the top toggle from rent to buy. We offer extremely competitive pricing on used gear that has been inspected and handled with care by a team of trained professionals. We also offer purchases of gear through our Keeper program – where if you rent a piece of gear and decide you can’t live without it, you can often purchase the piece of gear and have your rental fee taken out of the final purchase price (up to 7-rental days. certain terms and conditions apply). We’ve also been using eBay lately, giving incredibly competitive prices on used gear as we clear out shelf space for new and upcoming gear. So, in short, we have a lot of different ways to purchase gear, and without further ado, let’s look through some of the data of our most popular camera and lens purchases for 2024.
The DJI Ronin-S 3-Axis gimbal leads the list – an industry-standard in Steadicam systems, but only a few dozen sales above its slightly bulkier brother, the DJI RS 2 Gimbal Stabilizer. In fact, 4 of the items on the top ten are gimbal systems, with the DJI Ronin-SC Gimbal on the list at #11, and the
Zhiyun-Tech CRANE 3S at #20.
In addition to this list being pretty heavy on handheld stabilizers, there are also a lot of familiar faces from our list from last week. The Sony FE 70-200mm has found a place on both lists, as well as its Canon counterpart. There are also a number of Sony camera systems to round out the list and even a few drones… which we hope weren’t purchased because of crashes or other incidents. But to get a clear look at all this data, let’s break it down into three categories: cameras, lenses, and accessories/misc.
Narrowing our vision to camera sales reveals quite a few interesting pieces of information. Topping our list is the beloved Canon C200 with the EF mount (notably, the PL mount counterpart isn’t on the top twenty list). This budget-friendly camera system offers 4K footage in a relatively small platform. However, it’s also worth noting that the Canon C200 is pretty dated by today’s standards, having debuted in 2017.
Also worth noting is the large number of action camera systems – with four different cameras making up the top twenty list of camera sales. The GoPro Hero 9 took the second spot, the GoPro 10 just a few sales behind, and the GoPro Hero 8 barely missed the top ten. For reference, GoPro is currently on their GoPro Hero 13 – meaning these cameras are a few generations old at this point. Rounding out the action camera list is the Insta360 X3 – which, in my opinion, is the better camera than all three of the other action camera systems listed. For a better breakdown of our offerings in that space, take a look at the article I wrote last year testing all the action camera options. But now that we’ve touched on some of the cameras let’s break down the list to show the top twenty in the lens category exclusively.
Looking through this list, you’ll see many familiar faces – especially if you read last week’s top rented gear post. Of the top ten, 7 of them are what we’d consider the most popular focal length ranges for zoom lenses and are many of the same pieces that are found on the top rented gear for 2024 (and previous years if you’ve been following along for a while). In fact, the only big surprise in this particular list is the number of EF lenses found in the top twenty (four of the eight Canon-branded lenses found on the list, with three most if we start looking at third-party manufacturers). This could be related to a lot of the video camera systems that have yet to switch over to the RF mount or indicative of some other trend. But now that we’ve looked at some of the lenses, let’s look at one of my favorite categories: accessories and miscellaneous products.
In the accessories category, we have quite a few interesting pieces of gear to look through. Notably, the top two placeholders were handed off to Meta with their Oculus Quest 2 and Oculus Quest VR headset systems. Leaving the VR space, we see a lot of other interesting pieces of gear, such as the Inovativ Voyager 36 Evo cart, a personal favorite product in my private photography studio.
Moving lower down the list, we see a 25-lb Shot bag, which we never thought would be sold or rented, but it surprised us, as productions want a one-stop shop for both camera gear and production pieces. Finally, the last surprise is the Apple 16″ MacBook Pro, which is a little dated by today’s standards with its M1 chip and 2021 production date. Does this and the statistics showing that people are using and buying cameras that are a few years old prove that technological development has slowed down in recent years? Yeah, I think that’s probably safe to say at this point.
And that concludes our list of the most popular purchases for 2024. Did any of these products surprise you? And please check back in with us next week as we bring our attention to new products and list off some of the staff’s favorite new products for 2024.
