Tracking Your Camera, Grip and Lighting Kit as a Freelancer

By the Production Ledger team · Updated August 2026

Your kit is probably the most valuable thing you own that isn't written down anywhere.

Most working crew can't answer two questions about their own gear: what's the whole kit worth today, and where is every piece of it right now? Both questions eventually get asked, by an insurance company after a theft, by a production requesting a certificate of insurance, or by you, at a rental house counter, trying to remember if the missing follow focus went out with the B-cam kit. A gear list solves all of it, and it takes an afternoon.

What to actually track

For each piece worth caring about:

• What it is, specifically: "Aputure 600d" not "big light."
• Replacement value: what it costs to replace today. Not what you paid. The camera you bought used for $1,800 might cost $2,400 to replace this week, and the light you paid full price for three years ago might be $400 now. Current values are what insurers and productions usually want to see — and whatever your specific policy uses, a stale number helps nobody.
• Serial numbers for cameras, lenses and anything else with one. This is what turns "my camera was stolen" into a police report and an insurance claim that go somewhere.
• Quantity for the stuff that travels in multiples: stands, sandbags, stingers, clamps.

Small expendables, tape, gels, clips, don't need line items. They're an expense on the invoice, not an asset on the list.

The list is what makes your kit fee real

When a client asks what's in the package for your kit fee, "my camera stuff" invites negotiation. An actual list ends it: this body, these lenses, this support, this much lighting, on paper with values. The list doesn't set the fee — that's a negotiation, and a $23,000 package doesn't mechanically produce a number — but it makes the fee legible: the client can see exactly what showing up with a small rental house in your trunk actually includes. Rates and kit fees are two numbers, split out fully in kit fee vs day rate; the list is what backs the second one.

Insurance runs on this list

Two moments where the list is the whole game:

• Getting covered. Gear policies typically want a schedule of equipment with values, and what a claim actually pays depends on your policy's own terms and what you declared. An outdated list means the stolen lens you bought last spring isn't on the policy that's supposed to replace it.
• Getting hired. Plenty of productions ask crew for proof of insurance before they're allowed on set. Having your kit documented, valued and insured is part of being bookable on those jobs.

When gear leaves without you

The moment your equipment goes out with someone else, a second shooter borrowing a body, a gaffer taking your lights to a pre-rig, you need one more piece of paper: a check-out sheet. What left, with whom, when, and in what condition, signed. Not because you distrust your people, but because "wait, who had the 85?" three weeks later has no good answer without it.

Keep rentals out of it

Gear you rent for a job isn't your kit and doesn't belong on your list. It's a different kind of money — often passed through at cost with the receipt attached, sometimes billed with an agreed markup, sometimes rented by production directly — and however your agreement handles it, it gets its own invoice line. Mixing rented gear into your owned-kit records inflates your insurance schedule and muddies your billing. Owned kit can carry its own kit fee when that's part of the deal; rentals follow the agreement. Different money, kept different, mapped fully in kit fee vs day rate.