Renting 35mm adaptor

[ghc52]

First of all, is it generally possible to rent 35mm adapters?

Secondly, is it a good idea? Say I rented it for three days having never used it before; one for learning how to use it, and two for shooting. Is a day enough time to learn the basic methods of framing/follow focusing with an adapter? Or is this a bad idea?

I'm not expecting that I'll get a great image by just throwing a 35mm adapter on my camera; in fact, I know I won't. But are they that difficult to control? Never used one.

I want the nice, shallow DOF for my film. However, I don't want to ruin the footage my screwing around with an adapter I've never used before.

Thanks

 

[Huy Vu]

If you're going to rent, get one with a flip unit or rent an accompanying monitor that you can flip. It's a real head trip having to deal with a non-flip adapter if you've never used it before. And a follow focus is pretty much a must, as is a 1st AC to pull focus for you (no, it's not a good idea to do it yourself). With only a day, don't count on doing any complicated tracking or dolly movement; the curse of short DOF is that as soon as you move the camera, everything goes out of focus unless you have an experienced AC.

The moment you get the adapter, do the following:

1)Install. Don't turn the adapter on. Stop the lens all the way down until the GG grain is in visible. Focus on that and note down where the focus mark is. Tape down your focus ring.
2)Connect the camera to the comp and open up your NLE capture window. Put the lenses on one by one and zoom in until you don't see any more vignetting. Don't trust your LCD monitor, they usually overscan. Wider lens=more vignetting. Note the zoom level.

On shoot, have the adapter on at all times. Don't turn it off between takes.