9 things we learned from LensRentals’ Q&A on Reddit
posted Wednesday, March 12, 2014 at 12:37 PM EDT
Yesterday, the LensRentals team did an AMA (ask me anything) Q&A session on Reddit. Over the course of a few hours, they answered any and all comers on questions about lenses, business plans, and all manner of other topics. Here are 9 interesting things we learned from reading over the discussion!
- LensRentals taught themselves to repair lenses pretty much from scratch.
- The most common lenses rented are the the Canon 24-70 or 70-200 IS II, of which they have hundreds of each.
- They've considered opening up a repair service for people to send in their gear to get it tweaked to its optimum possible performance—but for now, LensRentals only has the capacity to deal with its own gear.
- They've had gear returned that was destroyed by a bear, and once even a shattered Canon 50mm f/1.0
- The average lifespan of a piece of rental gear is "two years or 24 rental weeks, whatever comes first".
- They're dedicated to stocking gear in a wide array of systems, not just Canon and Nikon.
- It's hard to test telephoto lenses without using a huge amount of space.
- They stopped stocking the Hasseblad H4 because it broke almost every time they rented it out.
- Don't shoot a Color Run. Just don't.
There's a lot more to pick through in the thread if you want to give it a read. Us? We're excited about the vague possibility of LensRentals opening up a service center, and getting your lens tweaked to perfection by these consummate professionals. How fantastic would that be?