[LargeFormat] Cooke Lenses - Suggestions for Future Models?

[Clive Warren]

At 1:09 am +0100 18/7/02, Clive Warren wrote:
>At 12:51 pm +0100 17/7/02, Clive Warren wrote:
>>Dear All,
>>
>>As you know (if you have been reading the EMails), Cooke Optics has 
>>recently moved back into the production of large format lenses. 
>>Their first new lens after a 50 year absence from manufacturing 
>>large format optics is the Soft Focus PS945 229mm, f/4.5
>>
>>Many people responded to a request from Cooke Optics on the f32.net 
>>Discussion Forum for suggestions as to the next lens they should 
>>manufacture.
snip

A short report for you from the Cooke Optics visit.

The drive to Leicester was uneventful although as usual I ended up 
working late the night before. Luckily the weather was overcast all 
the way up there and there was no temptation to take the country 
route through the beautiful Vale of Evesham - a great 'cycle ride BTW 
if you are ever in the area on two wheels.

Finding the factory was a bit of a challenge, managed to catch the 
sign out of the corner of my eye and drove into the visitors' car 
park. The factory is relatively modern, constructed within the last 
three years or so and is a sophisticated building including dust free 
areas and atmospherically sealed rooms for the coating processes.

Barbara Lowry met me at the door and we started chatting about lenses 
and cameras almost immediately. A planned one hour meeting ended up 
taking the whole day and I was introduced to many people both working 
on the shop floor and the design and management teams.

There are a few photos of the factory and some of the people that I 
will post in a separate article, probably in the Discussion Forum.

We discussed the future production plans for large format lenses and 
I passed on many of the comments made in the posts in this thread. 
The final decisions have yet to be made, however as soon as I know 
anything definite you will hear it first here!

Suffice to say that Cooke have been influenced greatly by the 
comments made in both the Forum postings and those here on the 
mailing list. They understand that there is potentially a market for 
lightweight reasonably priced field lenses.

Cooke were very interested in some of the toys in my kit bag - I took 
a whole range of lenses along to illustrate the potential for 
lightweight and compact field camera lenses, including a 90mm 
Angulon, 135mm Ektar Wide Field, and 203mm f7.7 Ektar and a 305mm 
G-Claron. We also talked a lot about Protar Series V lenses in 
addition to the Cooke Series VIIb wide angle lenses.

I managed to retrieve the lenses from the chief optical designer as 
it was clear that he wanted to separate the elements from their 
groups and start measuring refractive indices etc! Hey, those are my 
working lenses!

Overall, Cooke Optics were very friendly and their factory is a 
shining example of a very high quality manufacturing process. It was 
great to see how traditional lens building processes were integrated 
with processes run on CNC machinery and the lengths that were taken 
to ensure the ultimate in quality control. There is no such thing as 
a second quality Cooke lens - if it is not perfect then it is 
scrapped!

If Cooke decide to make the lenses suggested by feedback from the 
list and the Discussion Forum then we could have a superb range of 
new lenses to choose from for field work.

Thanks again for all the comments made earlier.

Cheers,
        Clive