Borrow Lenses is a company that rents camera equipment for just about anything you may need, from the coolest waterproof camera housings to the best portrait lenses money can buy. Borrow Lenses lets you rent professionally cleaned and maintained gear from the entire spectrum of camera bodies and lenses to every lightting style and suppor equipment for whatever your photographic needs. They even create their own package sets that have everything you would want for specific types of shoots like weddings, portraits, underwater, or even wildlife.

Our photography gear started with a Nikon D80, D5000, and a few basic lenses. We have come a long way from that, learning what we like to shoot with, and what industry professionals recommend. Both Laura and I have found favorite camera bodies and lenses that we first rented from Borrow Lenses (BL) before purchasing, which is such an important part of why I think BL and similar rental companies are perfect for photographers that are building and constantly improving their arsenal of equipment. And the range that BL has is massive, even if you are not a Nikon or Canon photographer, they are constantly adding to their collection of gear they offer.

Rental costs vary on the products you want, as well as the time you want them for. The better a lens is, the more expensive it is to rent, but renting a $2000 lens for $65 is a great deal, especially for the opportunity to use top of the line gear you want buy might not be able to afford yet. BL offers several common rental times like 3, 7, 10, or 14 days, but also allow you to customize the number of days you want to rent for. We have rented lenses mostly for 3-day periods over weekends, getting our new fun lenses and gear on a friday, and mailing it back on the following Monday. Ordering on their website is easy, they include an insurance charge to cover any damage the gear may get during shipping back and forth, and they mail their gear in strong packaging with a return label, so all you have to do is put it back in the box it came in, slap on a label, and drop it off.

They also have great customer service. We rented a camera body and lens for a wedding we were photographing a few years ago. The body came with a battery and charger as well. However, after coming back from the wedding, we realized that we had left the battery charger at the venue. We mailed back the gear, and contacted BL’s customer service, letting them know that we would send the charger as soon as we got it. They had no problems with this, and did not charge us for any extra rental days.

Borrow Lenses is great for photographers, especially in a profession whee equipment to help us continues to grow all the time. Most photographers can’t just go out and buy the newest and best gear, so this gives us a chance to test it out before we buy to see if it fits our style. We will talk more about some of this gear that we use coming up soon, so stay tuned!