Saturday, June 7th, 2008

Today is a pretty busy day. I’ve been fooling around with the adapter, trying to line it up right and do the micro-collimation on it. What that means is that the distance numbers on the lens will match up to the actual distance to the subject we’re trying to get into focus. This is taking a lot longer than it should.

My Mom (sweetest. Woman. Ever.) likes to pop over on the weekends to see me for a bit.
She pops over and brings me a coffee (the way to my heart) in time to see me getting angry with the adapter. Sue’s running around the house trying to get dressed and get all the stuff she needs together to bring to the stag and doe. Bill also comes over to get some testing in with the adapter, which will happen just as soon as I can figure out the right way to get the damned thing on and lined up right.

Finally I get it set up and we do some distance tests with it. Everything seems to be lining up perfectly. Something is two feet away, all three of my lenses show the 2ft distance marking. Something is 25 feet away, all my lenses are showing 25ft. Nice. We do some follow focus testing as well as Sue leaves to head off to the Stag to help set up.

What we’re going to have to do for this production is measure all of our focal points with a measuring tape to make sure that our focus is exact. Back in New York, I worked this way with the Arriflex cameras, so I’m somewhat used to it. Bill comes from a totally video background, so this stuff is pretty new to him. He’ll get the hang of it though. He’s a quick learner, and he knows the 35mm adapter is totally rewriting our game.

That’s about all the testing we can do for today as we’re running late again. I still have to get dressed to head out to the stag and doe, and Bill needs to run home again, get changed, and pick up Leanne.

Sue was worried about a door prize that she would have to get so I talked to Bill and we decided to offer a video/ photography package that we would do as a prize. Our schedule is quickly booking up in the near future, but what the hell.

Kyle arrives and we head off to Black Creek for the event. Bill shows me the print out of the prize and the boy came through again. Damn thing looks as sharp as a Hattori Hanzo sword. Kyle also mentions a couple of projects he’s trying to get us involved with, but we’ll see if they come through or not.

We get to the hall to find out that all the door prizes are already set out, so we throw ours on the table. It’s pretty damn hot in this hall, so I get my drink on but quick. Bill and Leanne buy a bunch of tickets for all the prizes, and I throw some money down to try and win the most coveted prize of the night: A Nintendo Wii.

The night goes on in this hot hall until it’s discovered we can open the windows. The windows open, and the fires of hell are squelched a little bit. Bill ends up winning a 3 liter bottle of rye, and Leanne wins a platter of some sort. I won another night of killing my liver.

They announce the rest of the door prizes and we’re a little disappointed that they didn’t raffle off the prize we offered. Oh well, that’s what you get for being late and just throwing your prize on the table.

We all head out at the end of the night, and Sue kicks around to help clean up. I get home and watch some reruns of SNL.