Most Popular Rentals of the Last 19 Years

This month marks Lensrentals.com’s 19th anniversary, and we wanted to celebrate with a few blog posts. What started as a few Leica cameras and lenses rented out of Roger’s garage (which you can learn more about in this podcast episode) has evolved into the largest rental house in the United States, providing thousands of pieces of gear to photographers and videographers across the country. To kick off these celebrations, we wanted to take a popular annual article that we write, highlighting the most frequently rented items in our inventory, and expand it to encompass our 19-year history. This will allow us to discover what some of the most groundbreaking and innovative gear has been over the last two decades. At this point, you know how these articles work, so let’s take a look at the top 20 most rented cameras of the last 19 years.

The most popular camera in Lensrentals.com’s history is the Canon 5D Mark III, a camera that we still rent to this day, and you can still buy new on Amazon right now. Perhaps that is what truly highlights the groundbreaking nature of the camera – the fact that you can still rent and buy new ones today, despite its debut back in March 2012. Over 13 years later, the Canon 5D Mark III is still being used on sets and for thousands of photoshoots.

Another important note is that on our camera list, Nikon doesn’t make its debut until the 11th place marker, indicating how much Canon and Sony have dominated the market for several years now. We still hope to see Nikon regain some of the ground it once held in the late 90s and early 2000s, but that will rely on their R&D department to produce something that truly challenges Canon and Sony in terms of technology and features.

Now that we’ve covered cameras, the one item we almost certainly rent more than cameras holds a place in the very name of the company itself. Lenses have evolved significantly over the last 19 years, particularly with the transition from DSLR to the mirrorless platform, as all major camera manufacturers have adapted to a new lens mount. And while some of those EF lenses are still among our most popular rented items today, the lens lineup has undergone considerable changes in this time frame. Let’s examine the most rented lenses over the past 19 years.

If you’ve followed our end-of-the-year posts of previous years, this list should come as no surprise to you at all. The 24-70mm focal length has historically dominated those lists, and does the same here, with five iterations of it making an appearance. Quickly behind those five iterations are six iterations of the 70-200mm lenses from various manufacturers. However, I’m personally happy to see one of my favorite lenses of all time, the Canon 100mm f/2.8 IS Macro, making its appearance in the ninth spot.

Lenses and cameras are just a few of the items we rent to photographers and videographers who require specialized gear for their projects. We also rent a wide range of accessories, including lighting, grip, and batteries. And batteries are exactly what we’ll be seeing as we take a look at the most popular accessory rentals over the past 19 years of our existence.

Batteries, batteries, and more batteries flood our accessories list of rentals, which makes plenty of sense when you start to think about it. These numbers are based on the number of rental orders, and it’s not uncommon for someone to add a second battery to their order for a long weekend, paying a couple of dollars more. Other notable items on this list include the Canon EF-EOS R Mount adapter, which enables the adaptation of EF lenses to the RF platform found on modern Canon mirrorless cameras. This suggests that, despite the majority of people transitioning to the mirrorless platform, they’re not yet ready to give up their EF lenses.

Did anything on these lists stick out to you? Feel free to chime in using the comments section below. And to continue the celebration of our 19th birthday, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to get your hands on some coupons and deals as we continue to celebrate through the entire month.

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.