In a post made in December we told you about an order we had just received of lenses for our large format cameras. The order included the very impressive
Schneider Fine Art XXL lenses for the ultra large format camera, Schneider Makro-Symmar lenses for 4x5 and 8x10 and the more curious Cooke large format lenses � the PS945 and the XVa triple convertible lens. I have to admit that I knew little about the large format Cooke lenses apart from they looked good, are made in Leicester and�� well that is about it. I had never used one and had never met anyone that had! The XVa is a triple convertible lens for 8x10 large format photography (to be discussed in a future post) while the PS945 Lens is a �soft focus portrait lens� for 4x5 large format photography.
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| Jim |
The PS945 is an attractive semi gloss black lens with a gold bevel ring with an effective focal length of 229mm/9 inches and an aperture range of f/4.5 to f/90. The lens caps engraved with the Cooke logo entice you to believe you are using a piece of equipment that is unique � and it is. Hand crafted the lens resembles the characteristics of a vintage Pinkham & Smith soft focus lens preferred by the pictorial portrait photographers of the early 20th century. The softness is created by chromatic and spherical aberrations resulting in an imperfection of the image. Cooke has taken the qualities of the original Pinkham & Smith soft focus lens and has manufactured their own modern day multicoated lens.
To see the qualities of the lens we began with a series of studio portraits lit with electronic flash in a very deliberate manner. A supplier of the lens stated on their website that the lens will bring a self luminating quality to highlights in a photo and it was with this in mind that the lights were arranged. All the images were taken at an aperture of f5.6 so the lens was not fully wide open yet the glow in the highlights is evident.
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| Matthew |
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| Chris |
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| Stuart |
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| Ben |
This second series of pictures are taken in various locations. Once again the aperture is set at f5.6 and the portraits were taken using available light with a little fill from electronic flash. This time the lens displays qualities you would expect of longer than normal focal length lens at this aperture.
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| Ben, Building Kiln |
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| Lorraine, Paint Workshop |
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| Dominic, Leicester Market |
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| Paul, Studio |
From these simple tests it appears the Cooke PS945 offers an alternative to the extremely sharp modern lenses of today. The studio portraits display a quality that is sharp, yet soft at the same time. The location portraits offer what you would expect and this in retrospect is due to the composition of the images although they do retain a �warmth� that is not achievable with other lenses.
All portraits were taken with PS945 on a Wista technical field camera. Film used is Ilford FP4 (studio) and HP5 (location), processed in Ilford ID11 and printed on to Ilford Multigrade.
The images yearned to be printed on a heavy chloro-bromide warmtone paper that suits the image. The below is printed on
Foma Fomatone FB paper.
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