Cooke s8i – new cinema lenses!

Mar 18 2022

Cooke lenses are one of the most important lens manufacturers that built a new way of rendering image, they produce a very natural skintones with warmth , it is defined as Cooke Look by Cinematographers.

Cooke recently launched new set of lenses adding to its S i series( I stands for intelligence).

The initial release will consist of seven lenses and will include a 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm, and 135mm. All of these lenses will have a T1.4 aperture and will start at $34,650. That’s a bit on the pricey end, so this will definitely be a set that you rent.

Another nine lenses will fill out the line in late 2022 with an 18mm, 21mm, 27mm, 35mm, 65mm, 85mm Macro, 180mm, 250mm, and 350mm for a total of 16 lenses.

Under the body, S8/i is an all-spherical design that produces a near telecentric output of the light rays, which is efficient for sensors. It is characterized by smooth, spherical bokeh and minimal color fringing.

Despite their large aperture, the S8/i optics are said to be lightweight and easy to use for hand held or with right choice of gimbals, They incorporate Cooke’s /i ‘Intelligent’ technology, which allows cameras to record key camera and lens data automatically. This includes focal length, focus distance and f-stop. Factory-calibrated shading and distortion data is also available for easier post-production.

Cooke was just starting development of the S4 lenses and the US distributer Les Zellan, brought the company in the summer of 1998,it had a every successful Cinematography lenses with earlier had S4i,S5i and S7i series..

looking back into brief history ..Over the years Cooke became the premier brand made by Taylor, Taylor & Hobson from 1894. During the 20’s 30’s and 40’s many different lenses were made for all types of application.

In the days of silent film people would use the best lenses they cold find but in the 20s when sound came in there was a problem as none of the lenses were fast. The sets were lit with noisy arc lamps and overnight they had to solve the problem of providing enough light whilst removing the noise – they needed a fast lenses.

As it happened before sound in film was introduced Cooke had already designed the Cooke Series 0 f/2.0 lens.. Nobody wanted them for the stills market when an F4 would do the job, why pay the extra money? But for movies Hollywood came knocking and the Series 0 became evolved into Cooke Speed Panchros with almost every film from the advent of sound to well into the 50’s being shot with those lenses. In short Cooke made talking movies possible.

Article by

CJ Rajkumar

Author/ Cinematographer