Cooke Optics said it will debut new S7/i, Panchro/i Classic and Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus lenses at NAB 2019, including sets that should be shipping in time for the show.
Cooke’s Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus lenses will be on demo in four different focal lengths: 40mm, 50mm, 75mm and 100mm. Cooke said those lenses will be “shipping in limited quantities” in April. Three more lenses in that range (32mm, 135mm and 180mm) should be available by the end of the year, Cooke said. They are available with or without Cooke’s Special Flair coating for exaggerated lens-flare effects.
The Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus line was announced at IBC last year as a bid by Cooke to give fans of large-format cinematography a way to leverage increasingly au courant anamorphic idiosyncrasies like lens flare and oval-shaped bokeh. The lenses have an image circle covering 24mm x 36mm sensors with a 1.8x image squeeze.
Cooke Optics 50mm Anamorphic/i lens
Also shipping in April is the complete Panchro/i Classic line-up, including a recently announced 65mm 2-1 Macro lens that covers a full-frame area. The other lenses in that range, including 21mm, 27mm, 135mm and 152mm versions, are designed to cover a Super 35 image area. Those lenses will be shown outside Europe for the first time.
Also set to arrive at the Cooke booth ahead of production later this year are spherical S7/i full-frame lenses in 18mm, 27mm and 180mm versions.
“The manufacturing team in our Leicester factory continues to work flat out to round out these nascent lens ranges, which are all made entirely by hand,” said Cooke Optics Chairman Les Zellan in a prepared statement. “With nine lens ranges in the Cooke family, we have certainly set ourselves a challenge to meet the ever increasing demand, but we are proud to offer cinematographers such a wide choice of looks that help them tell their stories.”
Cooke also plans to show its /i3 metadata system for providing lens data, including distortion characteristics of the individual lens in use, to VFX and post. Sony plans to integrate /i3 into its Venice large-format camera, Cooke said. Cooke will be in booth C6333.
