Getting into photography is easy, as long as you have gear. Your gear doesn’t need to be high-end, nor do they need to be expensive. All you need is any usable camera or DSLR camera. You don’t even need to buy one right away. You can start your photography hobby now by renting one. The question though is where you can rent DSLR camera gear?
Know Your Gear Before You Rent a DSLR Camera
But before you start to rent a DSLR camera, you need to know first what gear you’ll need.
First – It’s important to know what type of photography you’re going to be doing. This will help you determine what camera body you’ll need and what lens you’d use.
Portrait Photography
If you’re into portrait photography – you’ll be taking pictures of people’s faces a lot. Thus, you’ll need any type of DSLR camera and a medium to long focal length lens; 50mm to 85mm lenses will do the trick. Also make sure that the lens you’ll be renting has a fast aperture. 1.8 to 1.4 or a lower “f” number will suffice.
Street Photography
Street photographers photograph people going about in their daily lives. If you aspire to be one, you’ll be needing a light camera body. A mirrorless APS-C camera will make your life a lot easier because of its small frame. This type of camera’s size and its electronic shutter’s muted sound contributes to the discrete nature of mirrorless cameras helping you achieve photog-ninja status. Lens focal length could be anywhere from 35mm (23mm APS-C) to 50mm (30mm APS-C), depending on your street photography style. If you like to get up-close and personal with your subjects go for shorter focal lengths; but if you’re shy and would want to discreetly take snapshots of people from a distance, then go for the longer focal lengths. Any aperture size will do.
Landscape Photography
If you want to take pictures of nature and architectural wonders – you’d need a pretty wide-angle lens. 24mm (16mm APS-C), will be enough, but if you want wider shots, then you can go a bit wider. Fisheye lenses might be too much though. Any DSLR or mirrorless camera body will do.
Where to Rent DSLR Camera Gear?
It’s awesome if you now know what type of photography you’ll be doing. The next step is to look for places in Metro Manila where you can rent DSLR camera gear. Here’s a quick list of awesome providers that can help you start your photography hobby:
AV Studio Services provides a comprehensive list of photography and videography equipment for rent. They even have rental packages which give you all the options you’ll need to start your photography or videography hobby.
GFilm Rental has a very healthy lineup of cameras, lenses, and other gear which can help you in your hobby. They even offer studio backdrops for rent, if you’re looking into doing portraits.
Independent Minds has some pretty high-end gear for rent. They focus mostly on cinema-level videography, but some of the equipment they offer for rent can be used in photography too. Check them out and you might like their offerings.
Creative Light is a photography studio rental company. If you’re getting serious with your photography, then you may want to rent their studio so that you’ll have total creative control with your snaps.
There are tons more companies that offer camera and gear rental, but not all of them have websites. Some individuals rent out their gear for really cheap prices. You can compare them and some of the higher-end ones like the list above using the iRent Mo app. This way, you’ll be able to specifically pin-point what you need in your searches.
