We assess Calumet by renting a pro-spec lens from the company.Calumet rental doesn’t offer an online booking system, so hiring a lens has to be done over the phone. There are two rental centres, located in London and Manchester and if neither of these are close to you, lenses can be couriered to your address, but you’ll need to mention this at the time of booking so the courier price can be added to your quotation.
Calumet’s rental guide revealed a large range of lenses for Canon, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Nikon and Sinar users and though the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM was not listed, Calumet did send out a Mark II version of the lens to us. Calumet explained it’s regularly updating stock and the lens we wanted to hire is one that’s currently being added to the range.
The price for one week’s hire came to £214.68. This included insurance and courier costs. The lens arrived in a large cardboard box with plenty of packaging, safely protected inside a Canon lens case. A lens hood was included and although the exterior of the lens was in immaculate condition, the front element was a little grubby. The lens wasn’t fitted with a UV filter so we gave the front element a wipe over before testing the performance on a D-SLR body. There were no operational issues and AF worked well, as expected. Once we’d re-packaged the lens in the box it arrived in, we printed out the Manchester rental address ready for the courier to collect on the arranged date. There were no return delivery problems.
www.calumetphoto.co.uk