Cooke Speed Panchro

Cooke Speed Panchro Prime Lens Set:

The original Cooke Speed Panchro lenses, designed by Horace W. Lee in the 1920s, were a cinema prime set that chromatically enhanced an image when filming under restricted illumination. Cooke Speed Panchros combined a relative aperture as wide as f2.0 with an angular field of view and definition previously impossible with much smaller apertures. They quickly gained a worldwide reputation for quality cinema production and were widely used throughout the 20th century. This vintage glass has been rehoused by True Lens Service – TLS. Made from stainless steel, brass and aircraft grade aluminum. Now the whole lens set has been brought up to modern day specification. You can be confident that their updated housing allows them to stand up to the rigors of modern day production. These small and lightweight rehoused Cooke Panchro lenses provide the user with the beautiful images which are something that very closely resembles the modern Cooke S4 lenses. The Speed Panchros are known for how well they render faces and for their soft, painterly quality. They are as sharp as you need a lens to be, but still very flattering. They have a gentle focus roll-off and are just a little warm. The lens set possesses the perfect amount of barrel distortion and vignette, and are often the lens of choice for shooting close-ups of faces.

Cooke Speed Panchro primes came into play at the advent of the ‘talkies.’ At the time the noisy arc lamps could no longer be used, so this created a great demand for faster lenses. No other lens has the beautiful and unique look of vintage Cooke Speed Panchros, hence the moniker “The Cooke Look”. The final image all starts with the glass, and no lens before or after the Cooke Speed Panchro line of lenses has been able to match the organic, painterly look of Speed Panchro lenses. Get the legendary, unique “Cooke Look” without sacrificing the ease of use of modern PL mount cine lenses!

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