I’m working on an Anamorfake Russian Amber Lens Set. Following the idea of the extremely modded Helios, I worked on modding the Mir 1B 37mm f/2.8 and Jupiter 9 85mm f/2. Here’s the look with very basic color grade (curves and saturation). All artifacts, flares and tint come straight from camera.
In case you already forgot “The New Romantics“, I’m working on a similar project, with pretty much the same team. “Pickfair” is a murder-mystery comedy set in Hollywood’s early 20’s. I don’t think I’ve ever worked on something with such strong visuals. We shot it all at my place, with a tiny crew and super cool gear. I wrote a bit about the gear part for the production design and you can find that below.
“Friends gather for a murder mystery dinner party, each playing a Hollywood personality. The theme: 1920s Luxury, like the exclusive dinners at Pickfair Estate. When they discover the “bodies” are actually going cold, the group turns amateur sleuth to solve the mystery so they can leave the party…. alive! Everyone is a suspect. Everyone has a secret. With the same zany, slapstick comedy as beloved classics “Clue” and “The Pink Panther” and the twisted reveals of an Agatha Christie novel, ‘Pickfair’ will keep you guessing — and laughing — until the very end.”
Vintage setting, vintage optics
Modern lenses are all about embedded circuits, visual perfection, and lightning-fast auto focus. Efficient and easy, sure – but for “Pickfair” we decided to go in the opposite direction and use 40 year old all-manual lenses. These came all the way from the Soviet Union era. Under my hands they were cleaned and modified in order to boost certain artifacts. These artifacts or “imperfections” are key to setting the mood for the story.
We used three different lenses filming the teaser for “Pickfair”, one from 1971, another from 1985 and the newest one is from 1987. They’re a famous Russian trio of primes – Mir 1B, Helios 44-2 and Jupiter 9. I call them “ambers” because of the tinted glass and pieces inside the lenses that create warmth in the image. Like an endless golden hour!
Anamorphic: not a choice, a requirement
In early Hollywood movies needed distinction from TV. Anamorphic lenses created the legendary Cinemascope aspect ratio and remain in use to modern day. In combination with our vintage amber lenses we are using an anamorphic adapter to build even more character into the raw footage. We like to cook our look in-camera, not in post. Flares? Check. Lovely bokeh? Check. A more intense arms workout? Check!
Low lighting, practical lighting
To balance out all these old-timey optics, modern electronics come into play. we use the best camera technology available for shooting without massive light setups. Scratch that. For shooting exclusively with practical lighting; from meters and meters of twinkly lights, candles, small LEDs, flashlights and regular household bulbs combined with low-powered dimmers. I’ll use the lights that anyone can get their hands on. Practical lighting also strengthens the bond with the Art Department towards visual unity – not to mention the time saved when changing setups without the need to hide tripods and wires!
Flowing movement, character intimacy
The opening shot of the teaser is exactly the feel we want to imbue in our audience, making you feel like you are a guest in the party, one who has maybe seen a little too much. To assist us on the technical side of that kind of movement we will be using a light gimbal. Using a gimbal frees the crew from big, heavy, gear (like steadicams), and needing special training. The gimbal is straightforward and allows movement over any type of terrain, in any way (on foot, bikes, cars or even airplanes!) – all while keeping the movement butter-smooth.
The gimbal is key to long, super-dynamic tracking shots that draw the audience in, melting the disconnect between the screen and viewer, keeping you in the action as if you were in the room – something you’ll be sure to see in the “Pickfair” short!
Lastly, here’s that opening shot, without any cuts, just for the sake of dynamic tracking shots fetish. We have mobile light sources, dimmer-controlled lights, wi-fi controlled LEDs and 30 meters (100ft) of twinkly lights. Oh, and candles.
All the RED links on this post are part of eBay’s Partner Network, so if you purchase anything through them, you’re helping me to keep this project going.
Don’t be offended if I sent you this link and said nothing else. Please understand that replying to individual questions about this or that lens eats up a lot of my time and prevents me from developing original content for a larger audience – yourself included. So read the post and watch the video below as I did my best to answer your (and others’) request. If you still have questions, I suggest you join group discussions either on facebook or EOSHD and do some more research on your own. There’s no absolute answer to “which lens should I buy?”. It’s all in your heart and mind.
——
All the RED links on this post are part of eBay’s Partner Network, so if you purchase anything through them, you’re helping me to keep this project going.
Tito Ferradans here from the Anamorphic on a Budget guide and the upcoming Anamorphic Cookbook. So, there’s this question I get asked AT LEAST twice a day: “Hey dude, I watched all your videos and errrr… I still don’t know what lens to buy! Can you help me?” and, sure, I can! I replied to every single message I got so far. Facebook, emails, comments, instagram, whatever. The problem is it takes me quite the time to help each person and that’s not an efficient solution because tomorrow I’ll end up replying something very similar to somebody else. I was inspired to write this post after reading a great reply by Chris Bold on EOSHD and decided to write this post to help anyone tormented by the question of “which anamorphic should I buy?”
“There’s really no one piece of advice that’s going to fit everyone’s needs. The best way to decide on your first anamorphic is to research, research, research.
Tito’s Anamorphic blog is one of the best starting points. And you won’t find a larger collected body of anamorphic knowledge than this forum. Search it deeply! Also look at test footage on Youtube and Vimeo of various lenses to see if a particular brand of lens produces an aesthetic that really appeals to you.
Watch some films shot with anamorphic. I just re-watched the original Mad Max, and realized there are some shots with horrible aberrations at the edges, and the film has barrel distortion throughout. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. What matters is how the images made me feel, not how razor sharp or technically precise they were.”
– Chris Bold, 2016
This is oriented to those who never used an anamorphic lens before and desperately wanna be a part of the game. No, it’s not the final word about which lens should one choose and there are PLENTY of different ways to approaching anamorphics, but, once again, if you’re starting out now, you better start with the basics. There are usually a few other branches to the original question like I want sharpness!, I want flares!, I have so and so as taking lenses, I use this or that camera, I want it for less than $50 bucks, I want something easy to use!.
Heads up: nothing fulfills all of these requirements.
“Once you find a lens or two that falls within your budget, search EOSHD and other forums to see what others have built to get the most out of those lenses. You’ll find that there are different strategies to mounting them… from ‘bailing wire & bubble gum,’ to buying specialty parts, to custom-fabricating parts on your own, and many options in between.
1.33x adapters don’t have the sharpest image quality and don’t do well in low light, but are often the easiest to use. They tend to be lightweight and adapt easily to taking lenses. Usually good flares but less oval bokeh. They are relatively easy to acquire and will run you between $500-800. Not a bad choice for starting anamorphic.
Big projector lenses will give you that nice 2x oval bokeh, but vary wildly in terms of flare and image quality. They are invariably heavy so they require a certain amount of adaptation and support (which adds even more weight).
Although I don’t have one, there are some dual-focus lenses that appear to deliver great images. But dual focus seems to present another set of headaches if you’re shooting something with lots of movement. Probably not something you want to take on as a beginner. Dual focus owners can speak better to the learning curve and the time involved to get good focus during dynamic/complicated shots.”
Anamorphics don’t have a 24-70 f/2.8 – a lens that can shoot pretty much anything. Each adapter has its quirks and widely different price tags. In this post I’m aiming towards simplicity, towards a learning journey and not for a definitive answer. Most of the lenses I picked as “beginner” lenses have 1.33x stretch, which leads to a resulting aspect ratio of 2.36:1, almost perfect Cinemascope with no need for cropping or tweaking the camera settings. One step at a time and you’re gonna feel at home shooting anamorphic in no time!
The Panasonic LA7200 is one of the most common entry-level anamorphics. Its advantages are clear, it has large glass, light build, not extremely hard to find or super expensive and it’s a focus-through adapter, meaning that you’re gonna handle your camera the same way you always did, focusing with your spherical lens. It’s a great match for modern zooms like the 24-70 and it’s the widest anamorphic adapter out there, going as wide as 28mm with no vignetting on Full Frame. Oh, you want sci-fi flares? Sure, the Panny’s got them.
Its downsides are softness around the edges and the need to stop down the taking lens to f/4-5.6 to get sharp images. Close focus is also an issue, with the extra challenge of “how do I cover this front glass??”. The cheapest way is taping the diopters to its front. Needless to say it’s quite risky, but works wonders. If you want more info, check the LA7200’s in-depth review!
The Century is the cheap alternative to the Panasonic. With the same focus-through handling, you focus using the taking lens. Glass is not as great, but its compactness brings the advantage of being easily modified to hold diopters. Some of the older Centuries come in non-standard mounts, so you need to do some modding, but that’s also easy. It still goes very wide, at 35mm for Full Frame and has awesome blue flares. Optical downsides are the same as the Panny’s: softness around the edges, lower f-stops on the taking lens and challenging close focus. If you want more info, check the Century’s in-depth review!
The SLR Magic 1.33x Anamorphot is a renovation of the concept behind the Panny and Century. You still use your taking lens for focusing, but SLR Magic added a “Near” dial which allows for good quality and close focusing at the same time at the expense of infinity focus. It also has standard threads at the front and back, so no need for modding anything. This one doesn’t go as wide as the others but I had great results pairing it to Canon’s 40mm pancake. The recommended aperture is f/2.8 or slower, so it’s also not great for low-light and fast lenses. Flares are stupidly intense and that can be considered both good and bad, depending on personal taste.
The Anamorphot’s greatest advantage is that it’s readily available at several retailers and buyers get top-quality support from SLR Magic if they have any issues with the lens. I believe this adapter is one of the key stones in the increasing interest for anamorphics lately. If you want more info, check the SLR Magic’s Anamorphot in-depth review!
These are the only projection lenses in the list – I’m considering them as identical – and the only one with 2x stretch. It used to be one of the most common and cheapest anamorphics on eBay because it “lacks” the “vintage character”. I won’t go into that subject in this video, so here are some advantages of the Blue Star: it’s sharp all across the frame (at any aperture), easy to buy and a the perfect candidate for single focus attachments (Rectilux, Rangefinder or FM) down the road. The 2x stretch leads to noticeably oval bokeh, an anamorphic trademark, but the modern coatings mute any strong flares, resulting in a much cleaner image. The widest you can go, on Full Frame, for full sensor coverage, is 85mm, but if you’re extracting a 2.4:1 crop from the center of the frame, a 60mm focal length should be enough!
The bad news are these adapters are heavier and bigger than the other lenses mentioned so far, requiring lens support. If you haven’t got a single focus attachment this is a double-focus setup (you got to focus your taking lens AND the anamorphic at the same distance to get sharp images). The resulting image is also a 3.56:1 stripe against a black background, so you’ll get better results shooting 4:3 or cropping the sides in post. If you want more info, check the Schneider ES Cinelux MC 2X Anamorphic in-depth review!
——
These are my four strongest suggestions for anyone starting out with anamorphics. The Panny and the Century were two of my first lenses and I still like them very much today for their simplicity. Small steps is the best way to go since there’s A LOT to learn. Trying to encompass it all at once will very likely make you want to give up. Go out and get a lens, learn how to play with it an then start working on its downsides to improve them. This process will naturally lead you through all the steps in order to master anamorphic shooting and all of its quirks.
“Ultimately there is no perfect anamorphic solution. Every choice has benefits and drawbacks. The only way to know the best choice for your is to list our your needs, search through the options, and find the type of lens that most closely matches your needs.
What Bioskop said, [‘To hell with sharp, as Anamorphic lenses are all about the defects they produce’]. It is okay if your anamorphic images aren’t perfect – they aren’t meant to be.
Most importantly, MONEY = TIME. If you save money buying a cheap anamorphic, the more time you’ll have to spend getting it to work. So they key the questions are: what’s your total budget, and how much spare time are you willing to spend building your rig?
I saved money buying some B&H’s, but the time it took me to get them to where I needed was enormous. If I had to do it over again, I might have chosen a different route. Then again, I learned a LOT in the process.”
Buying your first anamorphic lens is an important step, but once you get started you’ll realize you are making it a much bigger deal than it actually is. I don’t have the first lens I bought anymore. Nor the second, third or fourth for that matter. I believe this is true to most anamorphic enthusiasts because going through the lenses is a very experimental process: sometimes I find a feature I really like in a lens and then I keep it for a while, then I get tired of it and let it go. Trying to find the perfect lens right from the start is not the right way to go because when you think you finally found it you’ll start to see its problems and get seriously disappointed.
Spring and summer have been fun. For the first half of June I was swamped during the pre-production and production for The New Romantics’ pilot episode – which had very long days, but the footage looks really good – followed by a two-week break all the way back home in Brasil. The last time I’d been there was over a year ago, and I really missed the people. Ariana tagged along for the ride and by the time we got back to Vancouver I think we were more tired than when we left.
The trip was just the perfect length, since by the last days we were already looking forward to coming back home and squeezing Finnegan. It was good to step out of my intense selling, filming, editing schedule for this long and it made reevaluate how I spend my time.
I turned my room inside out when we got back – I brought every single piece of gear I had left behind when moving from Brasil to Canada – and was determined to optimize where I’d keep boxes, rig parts, lens pieces and tools. Now things are looking rather organized and I think I know where each item is – or should be. On the next weeks I’ll be putting some effort into shooting more episodes for the YouTube channel and working on the Russian mod-set (Mir 1B, Helios 44-2 and Jupiter 9), with polished glass, amber tinting and oval apertures. The Helios 44-2 tutorial was received so well that I decided to expand the family. I’m also waiting for a lot of 10 Helios 44-2s for modding.
I’m also getting back to the USSR Lens Buyer’s Guide that went on hold before shooting The New Romantics. I have many lenses to talk about, countless pictures to take and choose from and a decent amount of pages to write before the project is completed.
Lastly, this was a little VFX stunt I started early this year and just finished now – rocks modeled and textured by Paul H. Paulino, animation by Fernão Morato, camera handled by Bruno Nicko and outstanding extra performance by Ariana Saadat in the background. My plan is to keep doing these small bits of eye tricks to practice and to have fun. I already have another one in the works!
This is a long post about thinking I was smart when I was stupid. It could’ve had terrible consequences but I was lucky enough to get through without losing money in spite of taking all the wrong steps.
By the end of May, some of you might remember a couple LOMO BAS Squarefronts popped up on eBay. One of the listings was for a complete set, using photos stolen from the web, the seller being a malamutecinema (now erased account). Several people, myself included, reported the listing for several days until it was taken down. On my case, I found an 80mm 35BAS-4-7, from a new seller based in Kazakhstan, sergew001-6. The lens was up for auction and I sent him a message offering to buy it directly if he cancelled the auction, for a considerable amount of money. He told me he was expecting to get a little more than that in the auction and would contact me two hours prior to its end in case the price wasn’t what he expected.
When the time came, he sent me a message and told me to raise the bid on the item so he would cancel the auction. It was the middle of the night here, and I wasn’t thinking straight about how stupid that instruction was, so I did it. He stopped replying and 5 minutes to go, somebody surpassed my bid. Then the timer hit zero and the auction was over. I sent him a bunch of messages about how dishonest that was and yadda yadda. He apologized and said it was his first time on eBay, and a bunch of other things. He said that he cancelled the auction after it was over and sent me a payment request on PayPal. I sent him the money and he went silent.
I spent the entire next day worried about my money. The name on his emails was Sergey Davydov, but PayPal gave me a different name. Let’s just say D., for I’m not interested in being a possible target for anyone. Upon googling his name, I was linked to the WHOIS domain registration page of Malamute Cinema. The domain registration info has been changed after I confronted him about it.
My nerves went on lockdown until the money popped back in my account as a refund. He said it was blocked for 21 days and the original buyer also paid for the lens and he had to honor the eBay deal.
On the same message he mentioned he had a 50mm BAS that he would auction too. Then we moved off eBay’s messages onto gmail. About his name, he clarified that Sergey Davydov was his alias, but his name was indeed D., but also that there were many D.s and he couldn’t be all of them – like the one on Malamute Cinema. I should’ve stepped out of the story here, but getting a set of LOMOs was my lens-goal of 2016, so I kept pushing forward.
Besides mentioning the 50mm, he said he’d be getting some roundfronts, already tweaked and ready to go (PL mount, focus gears, colimated) in about a month’s time. By that time, I was totally into the tale and sent him the money for the 50mm. In my head I thought “you know what, this is a nice guy and this is a good deal, I’ll send the money as ‘friends and family'”.
BREAK: NEVER. EVER. EVER do that. Multiple people told me that when I figured out the scam, and I was very lucky to get my money back.
On May 28th D. confirmed that payment was through and he would ship them on June 5th. I had already talked to Olex (lens technician, in Ukraine) and Viktor (to install PL mounts, in St. Petersburg) and worked the best logistics. D. would ship the lens to Viktor so he could replace the mount, then Viktor would send it to Olex for servicing and fine-tuning. I sent D. a few emails about why June 5th, and not the next day, but again he was dead silent. Then instead of one day worrying, I spent a week.
On June 5th, he replies that the lens has been shipped and sends me the tracking code. He also mentions that the lenses that would be ready in mid-July will be done in the following week. It’s a full set of roundfronts. I make him an offer for three of them (35, 50 and 75), and we agree on the price, to be paid when the lenses reach him.
In the meantime I’m turning my finances upside down to figure out how to send the agreed amount, selling many of my lenses/anamorphics – including my beloved Iscorama 42 – and getting a little bit closer every day. Talking to a few friends, I realized it wouldn’t be smart to send him any extra money before the first lens (50mm BAS) arrived at Viktor’s workshop. Before the deadline, D. sends me an email saying that PayPal’s taxes are too high and asking if I’d be OK with a bank transfer, or Visa Direct Transfer. I used that as an excuse to buy myself some time while I went to the bank and asked about how safe these transfers are, and what kind of information I’d need from him.
June 19th he gave me an ultimatum in a rather annoyed email. The same day Viktor tells me the lens is ready for pick up and that he’ll swing by the post office later to get it. I was able to get myself another day by saying the bank had blocked my transfer and asked for more documents.
On the morning of June 21st I get a notification that the 50mm has been delivered, as well as an email from Viktor with the following images attached.
I don’t need to tell you this is NOT a 50mm BAS as depicted earlier by D.
I immediately posted on Facebook asking for advice and tried to open a claim on PayPal’s website. Since I sent the money as “Friends and Family” the website wouldn’t allow me, so I decided it couldn’t get any worse and called PayPal directly.
While I waited for a person to pick up the phone on the other side I ran all the crap I did wrong. Starting off with the “Friends and Family” thing, then sending such a big amount to an unknown person and lastly, for PayPal’s sake, getting the package shipped to an address other than my own – an address in another continent even! Then a girl named Wendy picked up and asked me what was my problem.
I went on to detailing the transfer, what happened upon delivery and what I wanted to do moving forward. I was lucky to have written in the notes section of payment that the money was regarding the 50mm BAS. Wendy asked then about the difference between both lenses.
– Could you explain me better how these lenses are different, and why you want to reverse the transaction?
– Sure. The lens he charged me for is a rare Russian cinema lens, the one he shipped is a $50 paperweight.
– Oh my god! Let me put his funds on hold.
That’s when my hope started to return. Wendy instructed me to not dispose of the box, gather as much proof as I could that the whole thing wasn’t a mere accident. She put his money on hold and told me he had ten days to reply to the claim or PayPal would return the money to my account. Things were indeed escalating in terms of worrying about money in this whole story. It started with one day, then a week, now another ten days!
I reached out to Viktor and asked him to hold onto the box in case we had to return it. I also provided Olex with all the info I got on D., so he would blacklist him for his other customers and spread the word about it. Then I waited.
On July 2nd PayPal restored my money and I started to organize all the info to write this post.
In the meantime he listed some other lenses on eBay and things didn’t end well for the buyers either. It seems to be a running scam now, for new sellers (zero feedback), from Kazakhstan and LOMO anamorphic glass. It might be a killer deal, but I’m no longer interested unless it’s from a reputable/known seller.
The reason I’m sharing this story is because it’s one of the best ways to avoid more people falling into such schemes. I’ve been buying and selling lenses (and anamorphics) for about five years now and hadn’t had any trouble with sellers or buyers so far. You might not even be buying LOMO anamorphics or anything super expensive, but always make sure you’re dealing with someone trustworthy and that will hold their word to the end.
This morning someone tried to break into our house by punching in a window screen. Ariana and I were both still in here and we heard a loud noise, but we dismissed it as Finnegan – the cat – does that sometimes. When getting ready to leave, Ariana headed for her bike and found… nothing. The bike was gone, probably taken by the same person who punched in our window screen and bailed after the noise.
At first I thought our other roommate had taken it to work, since both of her bikes were still in the garage. Then we noticed all the bike locks were accounted for, and the distinctive stuff about Ariana’s bike – mudflaps, lights, blue helmet – was in a neat pile by the gate. That was when I noticed the skewed window screen and linked it to the weird noise. It was at 10h30am.
Ariana immediately called Vancouver Police’s non-emergency number and reported the situation. Since both of us were leaving soon, VPD said officers would stop by around 2pm. In the meantime, we set up an alert for the stolen bike on Project 529’s website and shared it on facebook. 529 Garage is a website that links owners and bikes and is connected to Vancouver’s Police Department. It’s an easy way to prove ownership in case of stolen bikes, since they track model, serial number and include pictures of the bike. Their registration fee is $20, and after today I believe it’s more than worth it.
With the alert out we headed our way. On the train I contacted our landlord to tell her about what happened and if she had any valuable advice. She mentioned that the house across from ours – in the alley where the bike was taken – had security cameras pointed to our garage. She also said she would be stopping by later to catch up on the situation and help us with making sure that no one would try to break in again. On facebook I got good tips from a friend – keep an eye on craigslist, check Hastings and Main, look out for shitty paint jobs, as the thief might’ve sprayed the bike to change its look, and DON’T engage with the thief if you find the bike: call the police.
On the way home, we were rooting for that security camera footage. Hopes up, just to be crushed down by finding out it was a fake, an empty shell to scare away burglars and thieves. I guess we should get some of these too.
It was around 5pm and the police hadn’t shown up yet, so Ariana called them again, and they said the officers would stop by at around 7pm. In the meantime we went to the garage, grabbed everything valuable that was stored there and brought it all inside.
By 6h30pm, Natalia and I were trying to cheer up Ariana with ice cream and brigadeiro, talking about the crap life throws our way and she told us the sentimental story about that bike – her first prized possession, bought with her own money, and that she carried everywhere she moved. That part we knew about, since we were the ones who helped putting the bike back together after she brought it, in pieces, from the US. Things were looking bleak.
As soon as we leave the room, Ariana goes “GUYS, I FOUND MY BIKE”. It was on craigslist. No doubt it was hers. The address on the map was five blocks from our house. She replied to the ad, playing it cool, asking if the bike was still available. She was calling the police again when someone knocked on our door. Two officers, Rebecca and Caroline, were here to help us. Ariana went over the entire plot with them, showed the listing, we went to the backyard, checked all the times for the noise and bike theft, looked around and headed back inside. Upon leaving, they said to contact the non-emergency number if her email on craigslist got a reply and mention the case number so they would be updated.
In the meantime we were desperately looking at the photos on the craigslist post, trying to figure out where the bike would be, and checking with google maps the houses in that area, placing bets on which of them was holding the bike and coming up with plans to get it out. We never intended to actually go there, but, man, we were so angry. Natalia and Ariana finally agreed on which house they thought the photos were taken.
It had been about hour since her email, so we decided to create a fake email account and email the person again, low-balling the price. Bruno then took the alias of Todd, and sent a message offering $270 for the $300 listing. He got a reply in a few minutes, including the seller’s name, address – the girls were right about the house! – and phone number. We were all exultant. Ariana called the police again, while Natalia called the officer directly – leaving her a trumped voice mail as Ariana’s call was picked up. They called her back and said they would stop by in a few minutes to brief us in what was going to happen. They also instructed us to set up a meeting with the seller, at the near skytrain station, at 10pm, and, in the message, say we would text him upon arrival. Todd was doing great spy work, posing as a West End dude casually stopping by East Van to grab a bike after work.
The meeting was set and the posting was deleted from craigslist. Officers Rebecca and Caroline showed up a little after 9pm to get all the information and proof they needed to check if that was Ariana’s bike. Ariana also wrote a statement about what happened, in detail, including info on the bike like serial number and a Chicago-bike-shop sticker. Go Village Cycle Center!
By 9h40 we were still waiting on the plainclothes cops who were going to pose as Todd and his buddy. I started to worry they would miss the 10pm meeting, but they quickly showed up and got all the notes they needed to check the bike. With ten minutes to spare, they all left and the four of us (Bruno, Natalia, Ariana and I) were in a state of extreme mixed emotions, from “THEY WILL DEFINITELY GET THE BIKE BACK!” to “what if the guy doesn’t show up and the bike is gone for good?” and everything in between those two scenarios.
After the most painful thirty minutes, we heard a knock on the door and Ariana rushed down to get it. Officers Rebecca and Caroline were there. With her bike. It turns out the guy said he bought the bike this morning from another guy and without any evidence, it’s impossible to charge him for stealing it. The difference is that now he has a record for possession of stolen goods, and if that pattern repeats, well, too bad for him. They also said Ariana did all the right things with contacting the non-emergency number, playing as instructed and letting the police sort out the situation without trying to solve it by herself.
The whole thing felt way longer than twelve hours but, there it was, solved by 10h30pm.
Later on we got another message from the seller to Todd, our coverup identity, saying he learned his lesson and pointing to another craigslist post where he said he got the bike from. Doing some light digging on the other post’s name and phone number, Bruno found a guy selling all sorts of crap for ludicrous prices out of a basement on Kingsway, not too far from here. The stuff ranged from graphics cards for $5 to full working computers and bikes. A distribution center for stolen goods, apparently. Ariana forwarded all this information to the police, it would be good if more people could recover their things.
All in all we got very lucky with the whole turn of events and VPD didn’t let us down. All of us had a really hard time going to sleep after this was over, for all the ups and downs along the day and the adrenaline still pumping in our stream.
You must be logged in to post a comment.