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Canon RF 24-70mm F2.8L IS: Lenrentals’ most-rented lens of 2025. Image: Canon |
It’s that time of year when Lenrentals gives a glimpse into the trends it’s seen during the year with its annual list of most-rented gear. This years’ numbers suggest Canon and Sony increasing a stranglehold, but not for the same purposes.
The Lensrentals list gives a fascinating insight into trends within the industry. It’s a very different perspective from sales figures in that these aren’t necessarily the lenses and cameras people are buying, but instead are the ones they’re choosing to use rather than buying. Some of it will be people trying a product before making a purchase but the majority will be renting a lens for a special occasion that they can’t justify purchasing, or getting hold of a body (or second body) for a particular event or shoot.
Interestingly, though, Lensrentals’ inclusion of batteries in their most-rented gear list this year might be the key to making sense of the numbers.
The appearance of Sony’s NP-FZ100 battery at number 3 and Canon’s LP-E6NH in 20th place is interesting, given Sony cameras typically achieve significantly better battery life than Canon. But, put together with a look at the most-rented cameras from each brand: the FX3 video camera for Sony and the much more stills-focused EOS R6 II and it reveals a pattern: people are renting Sony for video and Canon for stills.
Ultimately, the precise motivations for rentals can’t be divined from the numbers, but you can do a little tea-leaf reading.
This might also explain why the Sony a7S III makes the top 20 but the a7R V, which is a much better stills camera, doesn’t. It’s the 6th most-rented Sony camera, with the likes of the FX6 being rented more frequently. Also making the top 20 is a Compact Flash express Type A card, with the most-rented accessory list showing a larger capacity not far behind, which again suggests people are renting kits for data-intensive shoots. Though, in theory it could be read as people choosing to rent, rather than buy, a format solely used for high-intensity shooting on a single platform.
Ultimately, the precise motivations for rentals can’t be divined from the numbers, but you can do a little tea-leaf reading. For instance, the decline in the popularity of the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS can probably be attributed to the arrival of the non-retracting RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS Z, which didn’t itself make the top 20 but is likely to have split the vote, so to speak. We have to assume that the existence of the EOS R5 II (the most-rented camera not to make the top 20) is the main reason for the original R5’s drop in position, given Canon rentals were up, overall.
The precipitous drops shown for the EF 24-70mm and 70-200mm F2.8s and the EOS 5D IV suggest that we’re beginning to see the twilight of DSLR systems, after a surprisingly strong performance last year. This backs up the trend we see in the production data: DSLR shipments in the first ten months of 2025 were down 26.7% and now sit at around 580K, vs the 5M mirrorless cameras shipped in the same period. As a region, the Americas have seen the smallest declines in DSLR shipments, but the Lensrentals numbers suggest that trend is present here, too.
Lensrentals Most Popular Photo and Video Gear 2025
- (⇑2) Canon RF 24-70mm F2.8L IS
- (⇑3) Canon RF 28-70mm F2L
- (NE) Sony NP-FZ100 Battery
- (⇑3) Canon EOS R6 Mark II
- (⇓4) Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS
- (⇓5) Canon EF 24-70mm F2.8L II
- (⇑2) Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II
- (—) Sony FE 24-70mm G2.8 GM II
- (⇓5) Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8L IS III
- (⇑2) Sony FX3
- (NE) Sony 160GB CFexpress A card
- (⇑1) Sony a7 IV
- (⇓7) Canon EOS R5
- (⇑1) Canon RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1L IS
- (⇓4) Sony a7S III
- (⇓6) Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
- (⇑1) Canon RF 50mm F1.2L
- (⇑1) Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8L
- (⇓3) Sony a7 III
- (NE) Canon LP-E6NH Battery
Again it’s interesting to note that, despite Nikon having a very strong lineup and there being a lot of buzz around the likes of the Z6III, there are no entries at all for the Z-mount in the top 20. Only the seven most-rented cameras make the overall top twenty and the Nikon Z8 was the 17th most rented camera. The value of Nikon rentals fell, in percentage terms, relative to 2024. That said, given the popularity of the FX3, we’ll have to see whether the ZR has any impact on these figures next year.
More worrying for Nikon might be the fact that RED rentals have dropped from just over 2% of rentals in 2023 to 1.11% last year. Lenrentals isn’t primarily a video rental house used by the production industry, but such a big decline doesn’t seem like a promising signal.
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A breakdown of each brands’ contribution to Lensrentals’ revenue, in 2025. As noted in their blog, this disproportionately favors brands with expensive gear, such as Red and Leica. Image: Lensrentals |
The overall brand share shows Canon and Sony cementing their hegemony, with only DJI showing an appreciable uptick in revenue generation share. There are fractional improvements for Fujifilm and Leica, but overall the story appears to be that Canon and Sony are increasingly dominating Lenrentals’ business. It’s interesting to speculate on the degree to which that’s indicative of wider market trends.
Read more about the most-rented gear over on Lenrentals’ blog