Don’t let the endless discussions on sound or picture quality tweaking in some forums drive you into large investments if all you want to do is make a film to show to your friends, put on youtube or submit to a short film festival, it is IMHO not necessary to spend more than about 500$ to own equipment that is good enough for making as many shorts as you like and you can always make better choices regarding more expensive equipment, once you know what you’re doing and you feel more confident disregarding opinions of other “experts”. For more on this check out quality considerations and for my thoughts on priorities see spending priorities.

In my opinion renting equipment for a beginning film-maker is both expensive and in a way counterproductive because you don’t simply rent equipment if you have a spontaneous idea of a shot or scene you want to try and the single most important thing to get better is to get your feet wet and try, play around. With decent equipment being so cheap nowadays I would always recommend to save the money you’re about to spend for renting a camera, lenses, a rig and lights and go to ebay and get yourself a decent starter kit for under 500$ and play around for as long as you like and when you like and then start about thinking renting your 5D or even Red or a real Steadycam when you really know what you’re doing a few short films later. Even if you decide to not continue film-making, you can probably sell your equipment for at least half the price you paid and that 250$ only gets you 2-3 days of a 5D with lenses and a rig. For me that’s a no-brainer but as always YMMV.