lens rental advise?

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I just arranged to rent the Nikon 600mm TC lens for my Churchill trip with Glenn Bartley in June. Considering the eye-popping price for buying the lens (which now is readily available for purchase), this seemed like a no-brainer. I bought the all-inclusive insurance and accounted for an extra day at the front end. If I only "need" this lens for a few big ticket long trips over the next couple of years, I will do well to rent instead of putting out the immense amount of money for purchase and having the lens sit around unused for months at a time in between. I have plenty of other gear for "everyday" use or for shorter, less glamorous longer distance trips.
 
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I rented lenses twice.
The first time, my dog knocked over my lens bag with my 500mm F4, 1.4X TC and 1DIII attached and broke both the lens and TC the day before I left for a trip to Yellowstone. I went to Bozeman Camera and rented what they had available, which was a 500mm f4.5 without IS. Hamstrung me for that trip, but it was reasonably priced.

The second time, a friend convinced me to make an unplanned trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton one fall and I was between big lenses. I rented a 500f4 from Lensrentals and for a little over a week it cost me a thousand dollars, which I thought was really expensive particularly since this was 2012. I never rented a lens again.
 
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I have used lensrentals.com which had the lowest total cost at the time. The amount charged per day for different numbers of days, the amount charged for insurance and other fees varies widely so one needs to add up the total amount charged to know which is going to be the lowest cost company.
 
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I've rented from lensrentals.com and borrowlenses.com, sometimes at the same time as one site would have set up A but not B and the other site would have the opposite, not anything exotic (all Nikon stuff). No problems with either. It'll be interesting to see how they work combined.
 
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I actually have a Z8 rented from Lensprotogo on my desk in front of me.
Rented it for my wife to try out at Conowingo.
I can say it was a great experience. They are a class act.
 
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alternative option to consider - and definitely not for everyone

but I find anytime I want to rent a lens, it's cheaper for me to buy the lens outright (used) and then resell it.

especially when it comes to big primes. you can easily spend $1K - $2K to borrow one for a trip, whereas you could buy that lens and use it for years and not lose that much on depreciation

for smaller lenses this method probably doesn't pan out
 
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