If you work in film or video production and own your own gear, you've almost certainly charged a kit fee. Or maybe you haven't yet, and you're leaving money on the table. Either way, understanding how kit fees work is one of the most important financial skills a crew member can develop.
A kit fee is the daily or weekly rate a production pays you for using your personal equipment on their shoot. It's separate from your labor rate. Your day rate compensates you for your time and expertise. Your kit fee compensates you for the equipment you're bringing to set.
This guide covers everything you need to know about kit fees: what they include, how to set your rate, how they appear on invoices, and why tracking your kit fee income at the item level matters more than most crew members realize.
How a kit fee differs from a day rate
Your day rate is payment for your labor. You show up, you do your job, you get paid for your time and skill. Your kit fee is payment for your equipment. The production is essentially renting your gear instead of renting it from a rental house.
These are two separate line items, and they should always be listed separately on your rate card and your invoice. Combining them into a single number creates problems. It makes your labor rate look inflated to producers who compare it against other crew members. It also makes it impossible to track whether your equipment is actually earning its keep.
A camera operator might charge $800 per day for labor and $750 per day for their camera package. A gaffer might charge $650 per day for labor and $400 per day for their lighting kit. A sound mixer might charge $700 per day for labor and $350 per day for audio equipment.
The kit fee is negotiable and should scale with what you're actually providing. More gear, higher kit fee. Simple concept, but the details matter.
What to include in your kit
Your kit fee should cover every piece of equipment you're bringing to set that the production would otherwise need to rent. This includes the obvious items and the less obvious ones.
For a camera operator, a typical kit might include:
- Camera body (Sony FX6, RED Komodo, ARRI Alexa Mini, etc.)
- Two to three lenses or a zoom lens
- Tripod and fluid head
- Monitor
- Batteries and charging system
- Media cards
- Matte box or filter set
- Shoulder rig or baseplate
For a gaffer, the kit might include:
- LED panel lights (two to four units)
- Light stands and C-stands
- Diffusion and gel kits
- Power distribution (stingers, distro boxes)
- Sandbags
- Grip accessories
For a drone operator:
- Drone aircraft (DJI Inspire 3, Mavic 3 Pro, etc.)
- Extra batteries
- ND filter set
- Charging hub
- Monitor or tablet
- Landing pad
Every item in your kit has a replacement cost. That's what the kit fee is meant to offset over time, along with wear and tear, maintenance, and the convenience of having everything ready to go on day one. Understanding how fast gear loses value is essential to setting a rate that actually covers your costs.
Typical kit fee ranges by role
Kit fees vary significantly based on the gear you own, the market you work in, and the type of production. Here are realistic ranges for 2026 across major markets.
Camera Operators and Directors of Photography
- Basic mirrorless package (Sony A7S III, two lenses, sticks): $200 to $400 per day
- Mid-range cinema package (Sony FX6, three to four lenses, monitor, accessories): $500 to $800 per day
- High-end cinema package (RED V-Raptor, ARRI Alexa Mini, full lens set): $1,000 to $2,000+ per day
Gaffers and Electricians
- Basic LED kit (two to three lights, stands, basics): $150 to $300 per day
- Full grip and electric package (multiple fixtures, distro, grip gear): $350 to $600 per day
- Large lighting package (HMIs, multiple LED panels, full grip truck): $800 to $1,500+ per day
Sound Mixers
- Basic bag kit (recorder, two lavs, boom): $200 to $350 per day
- Full production audio package (multi-channel recorder, four to six wireless, boom, comms): $400 to $700 per day
Drone Operators
- Standard drone package (single aircraft, spare batteries): $250 to $500 per day
- Multi-aircraft setup with advanced payloads: $500 to $1,000+ per day
These ranges represent what productions are accustomed to paying. Your specific rate should reflect the actual replacement value of your gear and the market you're working in. For detailed benchmarks and strategies for setting your number, see the kit fee pricing guide.
How kit fees work on rate cards and invoices
Your rate card should list your labor rate and kit fee as separate line items. This is standard practice and productions expect to see it this way.
A typical rate card might look like:
Camera Operator / Director of Photography
- Day Rate (10 hours): $850
- Camera Package: $750/day
- Additional Lenses (each): $75 to $150/day
On your invoice, the same separation applies. For a three-day shoot:
- 3 days labor at $850/day: $2,550
- 3 days camera package at $750/day: $2,250
- Total: $4,800
Some productions negotiate a flat "all-in" rate. That's fine as a negotiation outcome, but you should still know internally what portion is labor and what portion is kit. When you track your income, you need to separate these to understand whether your equipment is paying for itself.
The kit fee portion of your income is what funds your equipment purchases, repairs, and upgrades. If you don't track it separately, you have no way of knowing whether your gear investments are actually working out financially. You can learn more about how to calculate whether your kit has paid for itself.
The difference between kit fees and rental house pricing
Productions often compare your kit fee to what they'd pay at a rental house. This is a reasonable comparison, and you should be ready for it.
Rental house pricing for a Sony FX6 body is typically $400 to $500 per day. A full camera package with lenses, monitor, and accessories might run $800 to $1,200 per day from a house.
Your kit fee for the same package might be $600 to $800 per day. You're typically charging less than a rental house because the production is already paying your day rate for labor. The convenience factor works both ways: you don't have to pick up and return gear from a house, and they get a single point of contact who knows exactly how their camera package is configured.
The discount from rental house rates is real, but it shouldn't be so steep that your gear never pays for itself. If a rental house charges $500 per day for your camera body and you're only getting $100 per day as part of your kit fee allocation, it will take a very long time to recoup your investment.
Why crew members should track kit fee income
Here's where most crew members fall short. You charge a kit fee, the money comes in, and it goes into your general income. You never break down how much each piece of equipment has earned.
This matters because your kit is not one thing. It's a collection of individual items, each with its own purchase cost, and each contributing differently to your kit fee. Some items are essential to booking the job in the first place. Others are accessories that add value but aren't load-bearing.
When you track kit fee income at the item level, you can answer questions like:
- Has my camera body earned back its $5,500 purchase price yet?
- Are my lenses carrying their weight, or am I basically giving them away?
- Should I upgrade my monitor, or is the current one still earning well relative to what I paid?
- Which items have the best payback ratio, and what does that tell me about future purchases?
Without item-level tracking, every equipment purchase is a guess. You're relying on gut feel rather than data.
How to start tracking your kit fee income
The simplest approach is to allocate your kit fee across items proportionally based on their replacement value. If your $750 per day kit fee covers $20,000 worth of equipment, and your camera body is worth $5,500, then roughly 27.5% of each kit fee day, about $206, is attributable to the camera body.
This isn't perfect. Some items are more critical to the booking than others. But proportional allocation by value is a reasonable starting point and far better than not tracking at all.
You can do this in a spreadsheet, but it gets tedious fast. Every job requires you to manually split the kit fee across items, track which items were actually on that job, and update running totals.
Rental IQ handles this automatically. You log your kit fee income, define which items are in your kit, and the platform tracks payback at the item level. You can see which pieces of gear have paid for themselves, which are close, and which are falling behind. That kind of visibility changes how you think about your next equipment purchase.
The bottom line
A kit fee is one of the most important income streams for working crew members who own their own gear. It's not bonus money on top of your day rate. It's the return on a real capital investment in equipment.
Treating your kit fee as just "extra income" means you'll never know whether your $30,000 camera package is a good investment or a money pit. Treating it as what it actually is, compensation for the use of specific equipment, opens the door to making smarter decisions about what to buy, what to sell, and what to charge. Tools like payback tracking make this analysis straightforward.
The crew members who build sustainable careers with their own equipment are the ones who understand this distinction. Start tracking your kit fee income at the item level, and you'll start making better equipment decisions immediately.
