Hire or buy?

Camcorders are continually evolving and improving therefore it can become a costly exercise to always have the latest technology along with the benefits and stigma that using the latest equipment offers. Hire has become a sensible choice to keep costs down. With camcorder rental you will also benefit from using the latest technology too.

Camcorder hire is an accepted practice with many professionals now hiring equipment from job to job rather than owning their own equipment, this allows the user the greatest flexibility and choice of equipment ensuring you always have the perfect camcorder for any given situation or project. With the cost of a good quality camcorders around six thousand pounds you would need to use the equipment over one hundred times to make buying the equipment more cost effective.

Using this ratio if you used a camcorder once a week it would take over two years to recover your initial investment by which time your equipment would have been updated many times over so whilst owning your own equipment does have many benefits, camcorder hire allows you access to the latest equipment, flexibility of choice to ensure you always the best equipment for any given situation and an affordable way of accessing the equipment.

I need flexibility in the equipment I use?
Would you like to always use the latest equipment?
I cannot justify spending on the best equipment?
I could get much better results with a better camcorder?

If you've answered yes to the above then camcorder hire will allow you to benefit from the best equipment and help you achieve the best results.

What's the best camcorder?

In short the best camcorder to hire depends on the job in hand and the choice of equipment you have access to, more often than not its all a matter of personal choice and taking in to account the results you are looking to achieve.

Choosing to rent equipment rather than buy often results in a more tailored look and feel to the end result you will find that certain cameras have a cult following with certain styles of videographer.

For example the Sony Z1 is used a lot for documentary style shoots whilst the Canon XLH1 is used by independent film makers. Take a look at the following information to help you decide which camcorder hire package to go for..

Key technologies to explore when deciding which camcorder to hire.

When choosing the right camcorder rental package there are several different formats to choose from, so lets see what best suits your needs.

Who will be viewing the finished project - A DVD camcorder is a great and simple means of capturing an interview, use on a sales training day or recording an event for reference, whilst DVD allows quick results that can be viewed immediately on a DVD player or TV they do not offer many advanced features or the quality you will find on the following camcorders.

HD / SD - All new camcorders now offer HD (high definition) as opposed to SD (standard definition) however many productions end up being out put in standard definition especially if you are shooting material for the web or the corporate world the storage space needed to store HD footage can become out of most users reach very quickly and therefore many clients start of with HD capture when filming and store this footage in SD on their computers to keep storage requirements to a manageable size.

Analogue or Digital - Camcorders can now record onto storage devices which can be in the form of super fast storage cards or hard disks and many utilize tapes however there are also a large number of hybrids which record on to both however it is clear that tapes will soon be replaced by solid state storage as the costs continue to fall and become more affordable.

Does Size Matter? - Is bigger better? Well it all depends on the project you intend working on, larger camcorders tend to be designed to sit on the operators shoulder this allows long periods of use without the need for supporting the camcorder with tripods or carrying the weight of the camcorder unsupported so the design of larger models take advantage of using the operators body to support the camera and make shooting for long periods of time achievable. In some situations a smaller model may be required to be more discreet or offer more portability and you will find that even the smallest of models like the sonyA1 offer the features and quality of much larger camcorders.

View our camcorder hire guides:

Which camcorders can you hire from Camerent?

Camerent stock a complete range of camcorder rental packages. You can hire most models of camcorders from Camerent including JVC, Canon and Sony models giving you access to the widest choice and a camcorder hire package to suit any eventuality.

HDV -

Is a format that is widely used and offers HD capture by way of an tape normally 60 minutes long, one great benefit of HDV is the storage of the footage does not take up any computer storage space as the tapes are normally used to keep the footage archived.

Camcorders that offer HDV can be found here.

Digital HD -

Storage for footage is quickly migrating to card based and hard drive based systems these offer a super quick method of getting the shot footage from the camcorder to the computer The latest advance in capturing includes recording to CF cards, XD cards and other solid-state devices, the benefit being the speedy transfer of footage from camera to computer.

Camcorders that offer digital HD include:

DV -

All HDV camcorders can either record in DV or when the footage is edited can be converted to DV this tends to be standard practice as you will always be recording in the best possible format and can down size the resolution until you achieve the desired results.

Camcorder rental Jargon explained

DV - offers a tape based recording format for standard definition footage.

HDV - Is also a tape-based system however this format can be recorded in High Definition.

XDCAM EX - Was developed by Sony and has been adopted by Panasonic, it utilizes SxS cards and has the benefit of a tapeless workflow that makes the need to log footage redundant.

DVCAM - Is very similar to HDV and was again developed by Sony, the DVCAM mode runs the tape 50% faster to alleviate the chances of dropout.

DIGI BETA - Offers a very popular tape based recording format used in the broadcast industry, there are two common standards; S tapes which last up to 40 minutes and L tapes which last up to 124 minutes.

Here is a quick guide and some recommendations on which camcorder hire package will work best based on your experience:

Get the best results.

Ensure you get the best results from your camcorder hire by choosing equipment that will bring out the best of your project these include anything you could possibly need from an editing system to supports and backdrops you will find comprehensive information on everything you need under the applicable headings above.

You can also take the time to view our camcorder hire videos these you will find help you to get the most from your equipment and help you steer clear of costly mistakes.

All these online videos are copyright of Camerent please do not re publish these files without prior written permission. This information is provided solely to help and may not be relied upon, Camerent will not be held responsible for any consequences howsoever caused by the use of this advice or the on line content contained within, it is simply provided to assist with booking of your camcorder hire.