Lighting hire in London: the same lamp, a 50% price spread

The same lamp, an ARRI SkyPanel S60-C, quoted by four London rental houses on the same morning: £130, £145, £150 and £195 a day. Identical fixture, a £65 spread, and the dearest is 50% above the cheapest.

Nobody publishes that comparison, which is part of why the spread survives. Here it is, with where each figure came from.

Four houses, one lamp

Rental house	ARRI SkyPanel S60-C, per day	What the page says about VAT
Sugarland	£130	"all prices are excluding VAT"
Wex Rental	£145	Excluding VAT, and excluding a 10% damage waiver
Media Dog Hire	£150	Not stated on the page
Shoot Blue	£195	Page also shows £234, which is exactly £195 plus VAT

Checked on 3 October 2026. Two caveats before anyone quotes this at a hire desk. Wex's listing is an LED kit rather than a bare head, so part of its figure is accessories somebody else might charge separately. And Media Dog's page does not say whether its £150 includes VAT, which on a £150 lamp is a £30 question.

That is the real lesson hiding in the table. You cannot compare two London lighting quotes without asking both questions — what is in the kit, and whether the number includes VAT and a damage waiver — and most quotes are given without either being mentioned.

What the spread costs on an actual job

Two lamps for a five-day week, at the cheapest house versus the dearest: £650. That is a grip for the week, or most of a day's hire for the entire camera department.

The second lamp people reach for shows the same pattern. An Aputure LS 600x Pro is £85 a day at Wex Rental and £125 at Media Dog Hire, a 47% difference on a fixture that lives on half the commercials shot in this city.

Add the waiver and the tax and the gap widens again. Wex's SkyPanel at £145 becomes £191.40 once the 10% damage waiver and VAT are on it, for a renter with no policy of their own. The waiver disappears if you can show proof of your own insurance at the counter, which is the single cheapest thing a regular hirer can do about any of this. The policy you want is one written for this kind of use — most retail photography policies exclude equipment while it is hired out, which catches people out in both directions.

Why cheapest is not automatically right

A rental house is not only a price. The dearest quote on that list may come with a tech who has checked the fixture that morning, a replacement if it fails at 7am on a Sunday, and a counter that is open when you need it. The cheapest may not.

So the comparison is not an instruction to ring Sugarland. It is an argument for getting three quotes on a lighting package the way you would on anything else costing four figures a week, because the spread is wide enough to be worth twenty minutes of phone calls, and because almost nobody does it.

We costed a full London shoot day recently and the lighting came to 47% of the entire equipment bill. A 50% spread on 47% of the bill is the largest single variable in a small production's budget.

The part that should interest anyone who owns a light

Now turn it around.

An Aputure LS 600x Pro sells at Wex for £1,984 including VAT, and Wex lists it as discontinued with no new stock. It hires for between £85 and £125 a day in London depending on who you ring.

Divide one by the other. At £85 a day that fixture covers its own purchase price in 24 rental days. At £125 it takes 16. Even priced conservatively at £100, below every rental-house rate quoted above, it is 20 days.

Set that against the cameras. On the same arithmetic a Sony FX3 takes 25 rental days to pay for itself, a Blackmagic PYXIS 12K 25, a Sony FX6 38 and a Sony FX9 58, as we worked out separately.

A single light pays for itself faster than any camera on that list. It costs a fraction of what a camera body costs, it does not go out of date on a two-year cycle the way sensors do, and a discontinued one loses value in a cupboard whether or not it is working. Put your own numbers through the calculator if you own one and want to check that against what you actually paid.

The gap, and what happened to it the same day

When this piece went up on the morning of 3 October 2026, every figure in it came from a rental house for a simple reason: Picturental had 82 published listings and not one of them was a light. Sixty-one lenses, fifteen cameras, and nothing to point a filmmaker at for a key.

That changed within hours of publication. An owner in west London listed two: an ARRI SkyPanel S60-C at £85 a day and an Aputure LS 600x Pro at £50 a day.

So the comparison this piece could not make when it was written now exists.

Fixture	London rental houses	On Picturental
ARRI SkyPanel S60-C	£130–£195	£85
Aputure LS 600x Pro	£85–£125	£50

Put the real costs side by side and the Aputure is the clearer case. Fifty pounds plus the 12% renter fee is £56 a day, protection included. The same fixture at Wex Rental is £85, plus the 10% damage waiver, plus VAT, which is £112.20 for a renter who holds no policy of their own. Exactly half.

The SkyPanel lands the same way: £85 plus 12% is £95.20 here, against £156 at Sugarland's £130 once VAT is on it and £191.40 at Wex once the waiver is too.

Two honest caveats, because one owner is not a market. These are a single person's prices, set this week, and they may not hold or may not be available on your dates. And the comparison swings on VAT: a production that reclaims it and carries its own insurance is comparing £56 against £85, not against £112.20, which is a narrower gap though still a gap.

Lighting is still the thinnest thing on the platform — two lamps against sixty-one lenses — and on the payback arithmetic above it is still the fastest category to pay for itself. The next piece worth writing is the same comparison for grip and power, which is the other half of a lighting order and just as unpublished.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to hire an ARRI SkyPanel in London?

Between £130 and £195 a day for an S60-C, depending on the house. On 3 October 2026 Sugarland listed £130, Wex Rental £145 for an LED kit, Media Dog Hire £150 and Shoot Blue £195. Most of those figures exclude VAT, and Wex adds a 10% damage waiver unless you show proof of your own insurance.

Why do London lighting hire prices vary so much?

Partly kit contents, partly service, and partly because almost nobody compares them. A quote may be for a bare head or a full kit, may or may not include VAT, and may carry a damage waiver of around 10% on top. A rental house that answers the phone at 7am on a Sunday is also charging for that.

What does an Aputure LS 600x Pro cost to hire?

£85 a day at Wex Rental and £125 at Media Dog Hire as of 3 October 2026, a 47% difference. Wex's figure excludes VAT and a 10% damage waiver.

Is lighting a good thing to rent out?

On payback, better than a camera. An Aputure LS 600x Pro bought at £1,984 and hired at £100 a day covers its purchase price in 20 rental days, against 25 for a Sony FX3 and 38 for a Sony FX6. Lights also hold their rate longer than camera bodies, which follow a release cycle.

Can I hire lighting on Picturental?

Yes, as of 3 October 2026, though barely. One owner has listed an ARRI SkyPanel S60-C at £85 a day and an Aputure LS 600x Pro at £50 a day, which with the 12% renter fee come to £95.20 and £56. Set against rental-house pricing of £130–£195 and £85–£125 before VAT and damage waivers, that is a real saving — but it is two lamps from one owner, not a category.