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What a one-day London shoot actually costs, line by line
Two lights cost £382.80 against £426.72 for the camera, lenses, monitoring and tripod together. Crew is the bigger half of the day at 52%.
By Picturental · · 6 min read
A one-day London shoot, single camera, four crew, two lights. The camera, the glass, the tripod and the monitor come to £426.72 all in. The two lights come to £382.80. Two lamps cost almost as much as everything the camera department carries.
That ratio surprises people the first time they budget a day properly, and it is the most useful thing to know before you start ringing round. Here is the whole day, line by line, from prices you can check today.
The camera package
These are real listings in London, at the rates they carry right now. The renter pays the owner's day rate plus a 12% fee, and nothing comes off the owner's side.
| Item | Day rate |
|---|---|
| Sony FX6 camera kit | £138 |
| Zeiss CP.2 five-way lens set | £150 |
| Wireless monitoring kit | £75 |
| Heavy-duty video tripod | £18 |
| Subtotal | £381 |
| Platform fee at 12% | £45.72 |
| Camera department, all in | £426.72 |
A full-frame camera, a set of five cine primes, wireless monitoring to a director's monitor and something to put it on, for the price of a decent second-hand lens. That is the part peer-to-peer does well, and what it costs to hire a cinema camera in London goes through the alternatives in more detail.
The lighting, which is where it stops
Now the part nobody budgets for properly.
Two ARRI SkyPanel S60-C kits from Wex Rental are £145 a day each, £290 for the pair. Both figures exclude VAT, and both exclude the damage waiver: Wex adds 10% in the basket unless you can show proof of your own insurance. Build it up and the pair costs £382.80 for a renter who has no policy of their own and cannot reclaim the VAT.
Two lights. £382.80. Against £426.72 for the camera, the lenses, the monitoring and the sticks together.
It gets worse the more you light. A third SkyPanel adds another £191.40 all in, and at that point the lighting bill has overtaken the entire camera department. Nobody plans for that, because the camera is the thing people think about when they think about a shoot.
We should be straight about why that line comes from a rental house rather than from us. Picturental has 82 published listings in London: 61 lenses, 15 cameras, two tripods, two accessories, one monitor and one audio kit. Lights: none. You can source a camera and a full set of cine primes from someone round the corner and you will still be ringing a rental house for your key light. That is a gap in what is listed, not a gap in the market, and it is the single most useful thing anyone with lighting in a cupboard could fix.
The crew, which is the bigger half
Four people is the smallest crew that makes a lit single-camera day work: a DoP, a focus puller, a gaffer and someone on sound.
What they cost depends entirely on what kind of production this is, and the gap is enormous. We went through which rate card covers which role in detail, and the short version is that two completely different markets use the same job titles.
On Mandy's London board, of the first eleven productions advertising, eight stated what they would pay, and the median was £220 a day. Four people at that rate is £880. That is the no-budget end: short films, music videos, unpaid-adjacent work, and it is most of what gets advertised publicly.
Bectu's rate cards describe the other market. They are split by production budget — £30m and over, under £30m, under £10m — and on a funded commercial the crew line is a multiple of the figure above rather than a variation on it.
So the honest answer for crew is a range with a floor, not a number.
The day, totalled
| Line | Cost |
|---|---|
| Camera department (peer-to-peer, inc 12% fee) | £426.72 |
| Two SkyPanels (rental house, inc waiver and VAT) | £382.80 |
| Four crew at the £220 London board median | £880 |
| One day, at the no-budget end | £1,689.52 |
Which gives the two numbers worth carrying around:
- The kit is not the expensive part. Gear is 48% of that day; people are 52%. On anything better funded than a short film, the crew share climbs and the gear share falls, because gear rates are roughly fixed and crew rates are not.
- Within the gear, the lights are 47%. The thing most budgets treat as an afterthought is nearly half the equipment bill.
Both of those hold before you have paid for a location, insurance, transport, parking in central London, food for six people, or media and drives. A realistic contingency on a day like this is not 10%.
What this means if you are the one booking it
Three things follow from the arithmetic, and they are not the obvious ones.
Cut the lighting list before you cut the camera. A cheaper body saves tens of pounds; one fewer lamp saves £191.40. Most people do this backwards, agonising over an FX6 against an FX3 — a difference of £42 a day — while adding a third light without a thought.
Book the camera package peer-to-peer and the lights from a house. That is not loyalty to either model, it is where each is actually cheaper, and on this day it is the combination that works.
And get your own equipment insurance if you shoot more than occasionally. The 10% damage waiver on £290 of lighting is £29 for one day. It is also the reason the rental house line is as high as it is, and a policy you can show at the counter removes it every time. Worth knowing that most retail photography policies exclude equipment while it is hired out, so the policy you want is specifically one written for this.
The next thing to price is the lighting, because that is the line with the most movement in it. What is listed near you covers the camera side; the lights, for now, are still a phone call.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a one-day shoot cost in London?
At the no-budget end, about £1,690 for a single-camera lit day with four crew: £426.72 for a camera, lens set, monitoring and tripod hired peer-to-peer including the 12% fee, £382.80 for two ARRI SkyPanel S60-C kits from a rental house including the damage waiver and VAT, and £880 for four crew at the £220 median seen on London crew boards. Locations, insurance, transport and food are all on top.
What is the most expensive part of a shoot day?
The people. On the day costed above, crew is 52% of the total and all the equipment together is 48%. On a better-funded production the crew share grows, because equipment rates are broadly fixed while crew rates scale with the production's budget band.
How much does lighting cost to hire in London?
An ARRI SkyPanel S60-C LED kit is £145 a day at Wex Rental, excluding VAT and excluding a 10% damage waiver that is added unless you can show your own insurance. Two of them therefore cost £382.80 all in for a renter who cannot reclaim VAT, which is close to the cost of an entire camera package.
Can I hire lighting on Picturental?
Not currently. Of 82 published London listings, 61 are lenses and 15 are cameras, with a handful of tripods, accessories, a monitor and an audio kit. There is no lighting listed, so the lighting line in any budget here comes from a rental house. Anyone with lights sitting idle is looking at the least contested category on the platform.
Is it cheaper to hire gear peer-to-peer or from a rental house?
For cameras and lenses, usually peer-to-peer, especially if you cannot reclaim VAT or do not hold your own insurance. For lighting in London today the question does not arise, because the peer-to-peer option does not exist yet. The comparison turns on VAT and damage waiver more than on the headline day rate.