Film crew hire/London/Kit rental
Film equipment hire in London. Kit houses, day rates, and the crew’s own kit.
Most of London’s camera, lens and lighting hire sits in a west London belt from Park Royal and Acton out to Greenford, Hayes and Uxbridge, with a smaller cluster east of our office on City Road, in Shoreditch and Hoxton. Here’s who’s where, what they publish, what a first hire asks of you, and when we book the kit with the crew instead.
Sony FX6 kit · per day
£138–172
ARRI Alexa 35 · per day
£949–1,100
Damage waiver
18–20% on top
Congestion Charge · kit van
£18 a day
On this page
01 Wet hire or dry hire
Two ways to get kit: from a kit house, or with the crew
Dry hire means you rent the kit and run it yourself. Wet hire means it comes with the person who operates it. On most London shoots we book a mix of the two.
Dry hire
From a kit house
Who owns it
The kit house: Panavision in Greenford, VMI in Acton, FOMO Rentals in east London
How it’s priced
A day rate per item or package, plus an 18–20% damage waiver unless your own insurance covers it. VMI and FOMO charge a week as three days
Getting it there
Collected the afternoon before, from 4pm at FOMO and Shoot Blue, and back by mid-morning after the shoot
Who knows it best
Whoever operates it, if they’ve used that model before
Best for
A specific camera, cine primes or anamorphics, a film camera, a big lighting package
Wet hire
With the crew’s kit
Who owns it
The DOP, camera operator, sound recordist or gaffer you’re booking
How it’s priced
A kit fee on its own line of the quote, apart from the day rate. Our 10% booking fee and 2% insurance go on it, as on everything we book
Getting it there
It arrives with the operator at call time, prepped and charged
Who knows it best
The person who owns it, maintains it and uses it every week
Best for
Interview and conference days in London offices: FX6s, radio mics, LED panels, a gaffer’s van
How we book it
For AlTi Tiedemann Global’s fireside chat at Many Rooms in Battersea in March 2026, the cameras came dry from FOMO Rentals, the lighting came on the gaffer’s van, and the sound recordist brought their own kit. On an office interview, wet hire is often the better deal: the kit is already paid for, prepped and insured, so the fee carries no waiver and no collection run across town. Dry hire wins when the job calls for something specific, and then the crew run what we hire. Either way, kit sits on its own line of the quote.
02 Day rates
What kit costs to hire in London
Published dry-hire rates from three London houses, per day and before any damage waiver. Checked October 2026.
| Item | Per day | Listed by |
|---|---|---|
| Sony FX6 kit | £138–172 | Shoot Blue, FOMO Rentals, VMI |
| Sony FX3 | £100–160 | Shoot Blue, FOMO Rentals, VMI |
| Sony FX9 | £175–235 | Shoot Blue, FOMO Rentals, VMI |
| Sony Venice | £505–549 | Shoot Blue, VMI |
| Sony Burano | £520 | FOMO Rentals |
| ARRI Alexa Mini LF | £699–965 | VMI, FOMO Rentals, Shoot Blue |
| ARRI Alexa 35 | £949–1,100 | VMI, Shoot Blue, FOMO Rentals |
| RED V-Raptor 8K VV | £600 | FOMO Rentals |
| DJI Ronin 4D (6K) | £365–525 | FOMO Rentals, VMI |
| Cine primes, five-lens set | £150–680 | Shoot Blue: Zeiss CP.2 to Zeiss Supreme, with Cooke SP3 at £310 |
| Aputure 600-series LED | £88–98 | Shoot Blue |
| ARRI SkyPanel S60-C | £195 | Shoot Blue |
| Sennheiser MKH 416 kit | £19 | Shoot Blue |
| Radio lapel kit (Sennheiser G4) | £40 | Shoot Blue |
| Dana Dolly | £98 | Shoot Blue |
What moves the number
The week
VMI prices a week at three days’ hire, so an FX6 is £172 a day or £516 a week. FOMO charges three to seven days as three, and 10 to 14 as six. Shoot Blue quotes weekly hire on request.
The weekend
FOMO is closed at weekends: collect between 4pm and 6pm on Friday, return between 9am and 10:30am on Monday, and it’s charged as one day.
The waiver
VMI adds 18% on hires under £5,000, and a claim still costs a contributory £350 to £800; above £5,000 you need your own insurance. Shoot Blue’s waiver is 20% of the hire with a £500 excess, and covers accidental damage only. FOMO doesn’t offer one: it wants hired-in cover for the full value.
The hire day
Shoot Blue’s day runs from 4pm on the day you collect to 11am the day after. FOMO releases kit from 4pm the day before and wants it back by 10:30am the day after.
03 Who to call
London’s kit houses, west and east
Most of the big rental floors are out west, between Park Royal and Uxbridge. A smaller cluster sits in east London. Every house below was checked on its own site in October 2026.
West London
Greenford · Bristol Road, UB6 8GD
Panavision London
Cinema cameras and Panavision’s own optics, with Panastore expendables at the same address. Panavision Grip & Remote Systems moved into a bigger building directly across the road in April 2025: dollies, cranes and remote heads.
Hayes · Pasadena Close, UB3 3NQ
Panalux London
Lighting rental, a power-generation fleet, custom rigging, textiles and its own transport. Part of the Panavision group.
Uxbridge · Oxford Road, UB8 1LX
ARRI Rental UK
Camera and grip, with an out-of-hours grip line. ARRI calls it ARRI Rental London, but it’s in Uxbridge, with ARRI Stage London, its virtual production stage, on the same estate.
Acton · Victoria Road, W3 6UU
VMI
Digital cinema packages from the FX3 to Alexa 35, Venice and RED V-Raptor, plus Ronin 4D and Phantom VEO 4K. Its VMEDIA arm rents fast cards, SSDs and flight-safe batteries. Trading since 1979.
Acton · Roslin Road, W3 8DH
Shoot Blue
Camera, lenses, lighting, grip, power and audio, since 2004. The lowest FX-series rates in our table.
Park Royal · Central Park, NW10 7FY
One Stop Films
A lens house for big anamorphic and vintage glass, with Alexa 35, Mini LF, Venice 2 and RED bodies, and film cameras: ARRIFLEX 416, 235 and 435 Xtreme, ARRICAM LT and ST.
East London
Hoxton · Waterson Street, E2 8HL
The Kit Room
Camera, lenses, tripods and grip, lighting, sound, monitors, and media and data storage. Albert carbon-neutral certified.
Sound, playback and data
Shepperton Studios · TW17 0QD
Richmond Film Services
Specialist sound hire, 2,000+ items from radio mics and recorders to timecode, Rycote and comms, plus a sales shop. Despite the name, it’s at Shepperton, not Richmond.
Elstree Film Studios · WD6 1JG
Everything Audio
Production sound sales, hire and service: radio mics, recorders and mixers, boom poles, timecode and soundcarts.
Park Royal NW10 and Shepperton TW17
Mission
On-set DIT, digital dailies, video playback, on-set internet and fast storage.
Out of date
Older London kit lists still send people to Shift 4, Procam Take 2, Movietech and Pro Motion Hire. Shift 4 went into administration in April 2024 and Procam Take 2 in July 2023. Movietech is now Sunbelt Rentals Film & TV, and Pro Motion Hire was bought by Pixipixel in February 2023. Wedio is a peer-to-peer platform, not a rental house.
04 By department
What’s in stock in London, by department
What the London houses list today, and what we’d usually reach for on a brand or corporate shoot.
Cameras
Sony FX3, FX6, FX9, Venice and Burano; ARRI Alexa 35 and Mini LF; RED V-Raptor. For film, One Stop Films lists ARRIFLEX and ARRICAM bodies, and Panavision supplied our 35mm package.
Lenses
Cooke SP3 and Anamorphic/i, Zeiss Supreme, Super Speed, CP.2 and Ultra Prime sets on Shoot Blue’s card alone; anamorphic and vintage glass at One Stop Films; Panavision’s own optics in Greenford.
Lighting
Aputure 600 and 1200 series and SkyPanels on the rate cards; Panalux in Hayes and Solalights next door for bigger rigs and HMIs; Newman Hire, also in Hayes, for practical and period fittings.
Grip
Panavision Grip & Remote in Greenford and ARRI Rental in Uxbridge for dollies, cranes and remote heads; Dana Dollies and sliders on the smaller houses’ lists.
Sound
Richmond Film Services at Shepperton and Everything Audio at Elstree specialise in it. Shoot Blue lists an MKH 416 kit at £19 a day and a G4 lapel kit at £40.
Playback and data
Mission for playback and DIT; VMI’s VMEDIA for cards, SSDs and flight-safe batteries; The Kit Room for media and data storage.
05 Kit lists
Kit for the set-ups we run most
Our crew set-ups are on the London crew page. Here’s the kit that usually goes with them, and what it costs to book through us.
Two-camera interview
Our own kit: two Sony FX6s and an FX3, a set of primes, Aputure 600 and 300 LEDs, an Amaran panel, a shotgun mic and tripods.
The gaffer’s van
LEDs, stands, flags, cable and distro, in a van that comes to set with the gaffer. It lit AlTi Tiedemann Global’s fireside chat at Many Rooms in March 2026, with a spark alongside.
Grip · swing
Grip package
Dolly and track, sliders, stands, flags and frames, for moving shots in an office or a City lobby. On a four-day shoot at a law firm on Cannon Street and an office in Uxbridge in September 2025, a three-day deal on four days of kit hire saved about £4,700.
Focus puller · clapper loader · prepped in Greenford, shot in Cornwall
A 35mm package
For Cohere’s AI for Empowerment, two of the London camera crew prepped an Arricam package at Panavision Greenford in one working day, on 12 June 2026. It was collected on the 15th, shot on the Lizard on the 16th and back on the 17th. Panavision offered a second body at no charge, as a back-up, because of the location.
06 Paperwork
Your first hire: what a London house asks for
Kit houses check new customers before anything leaves the building. Here’s what two London houses asked of us, and what the others publish.
- Panavision, June 2026: payment in full before collection, a credit application, and an insurance certificate for the hired-in kit.
- FOMO Rentals, May 2025: a new account, cover for the full value of the kit, and the first rental collected and returned in person. We collected a Ronin 4D at 5:45pm, the evening before a brand film in Marylebone.
- VMI: your own insurance on any hire over £5,000; under that, its 18% waiver.
- Shoot Blue: evidence of insurance before the kit goes out, and a deposit or a guarantor if it asks.
Book it through us and it goes on our account. On a crew hire, the 2% insurance on the quote covers the kit we hire in for you, along with employers’ liability for the crew we book. A large rental may need extra cover, as its own line on the quote.
07 Delivery
Getting kit to your location
Five ways kit reaches a London set.
01
Collected
A crew member collects the afternoon before, inside the house’s hire times. When the house is across town, we book a late pick-up and drop-off: in January 2025 FOMO held a camera order until 7pm the night before a studio day in Woolwich, an hour away, and took it back at 8pm after wrap.
02
Driven in
Every kit van that comes into the centre pays the Congestion Charge: £18 a day, 7am to 6pm on weekdays and noon to 6pm at weekends, with no separate van rate. ULEZ covers every borough, around the clock, and a diesel van that isn’t Euro 6 pays £12.50 a day on top. Checked October 2026. More in our London logistics guide.
03
Delivered
FOMO delivers through a courier partner, VMI can deliver for a fee, Shoot Blue agrees delivery charges before the day, and Panalux runs its own transport fleet. Check the van’s height first: at One Canada Square in October 2024, the gaffer’s 2.02m van was too tall for the underground car park, so it unloaded in the loading bay and parked elsewhere.
04
By Tube
A light camera kit can travel on the Tube and the Elizabeth line, if you can carry it yourself, stairs and escalators included, and nothing is longer than 2 metres. Filming on the network needs TfL’s permission, battery-powered kit and no generators.
05
From abroad
Kit flying in comes on an ATA Carnet: here’s how bringing film equipment into the UK works. Or send the list and we’ll match it from London houses.
Weekends
Shooting on a Saturday? FOMO is closed at weekends and The Kit Room opens Monday to Friday, so collect on the Friday. FOMO charges a Friday-to-Monday hire as one day.
Estates
On a private estate, the kit decides the paperwork. At Canary Wharf a camera on a stationary tripod may not need a permit, but anything more needs a method statement, a risk assessment and 10 to 12 working days’ notice. Battersea Power Station wants a permit for any tripod, gimbal or light. Neither allows drones. How London’s estates work.
Send us your kit list.
Paste it into the form with your dates. We’ll price it both ways: dry hire from a London house, and with the crew’s own kit. Or call us on 07412 543822.
Quick contact form
08 Questions
Hiring film equipment in London: questions
How much does it cost to hire a camera in London?
On the published lists we checked in October 2026, a Sony FX6 kit is £138–172 a day, an FX3 £100–160 and an ARRI Alexa 35 £949–1,100, at Shoot Blue, FOMO Rentals and VMI. Add VAT, and an 18–20% damage waiver unless your own insurance covers it. Book the camera with the operator who owns it and the kit fee is its own line on the crew quote.
What’s the difference between wet hire and dry hire?
Dry hire is the kit on its own: you collect it from the house, run it and bring it back. Wet hire comes with the person who operates it, usually its owner. Most of our London bookings use both: cameras from a kit house, lighting on the gaffer’s van.
Where are London’s kit houses?
Mostly in west London: Panavision in Greenford, VMI and Shoot Blue in Acton, One Stop Films in Park Royal, Panalux in Hayes and ARRI Rental in Uxbridge. A smaller cluster in east London includes FOMO Rentals, The Kit Room and Cameraworks, in and around Shoreditch and Hoxton.
Do I need insurance to hire kit in London?
You need your own hired-in cover or the house’s damage waiver. VMI adds 18% on hires under £5,000 and wants your own insurance above that; Shoot Blue’s waiver is 20%; FOMO and Panavision want cover for the kit’s full value. Book it through us on a crew hire and the kit is covered by the 2% insurance on the quote.
Can I collect kit at the weekend?
Not from the east London houses: FOMO Rentals is closed at weekends, and The Kit Room and Cameraworks open on weekdays only, so collect on the Friday. FOMO lets you collect between 4pm and 6pm on Friday and return on Monday morning, and charges it as one day.
Does a kit van pay the Congestion Charge?
Yes. A van pays the same £18 a day as a car, 7am to 6pm on weekdays and noon to 6pm at weekends and bank holidays. If it isn’t ULEZ-compliant (a diesel van needs to be Euro 6), add £12.50 a day, anywhere in London. Checked October 2026.
Can I take camera kit on the Tube?
You can carry kit you can manage yourself, on stairs and escalators too, as long as nothing is over 2 metres long or blocks doors and aisles. Filming on the network is different: it needs TfL’s permission, with at least 15 working days’ notice.
Around the crew
More for London shoots
02
Locations and permits
Borough film services, the Royal Parks, TfL, the private estates and the drone zones.
