Cooke Optics to receive Technical Lifetime Achievement Award at Cine Gear Expo 2013

Lifetime achievement award

Cooke Optics will be the recipient of the Cine Gear Expo 2013 Technical Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of 'the significant contributions Cooke has made to advancing the art and craft of film making'. The award will be presented at the Cine Gear Expo VIP Reception at the Paramount Theater and Paseo Grounds on Friday 31 May 2013.

"We're honoured to receive this accolade celebrating our 127 years of innovation within the motion picture industry," said Les Zellan, Chairman and Owner, Cooke Optics. "I like to think that the original founders of Cooke lenses would approve of what we are doing today, following in their ground-breaking footsteps to create the best possible lenses for today's film makers."

Anamorphic lenses

Cooke will present its latest innovations on Booth 67 at Cine Gear Expo, including aprototype from its new Anamorphic/i lens range which was unveiled at NAB 2013. The Anamorphic/i range will consist of seven brand new prime lenses - 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm and 135mm, all at T2.3. The new lenses are approximately the size of Cooke's industry standard S4/i lenses, retain the Cooke Look®, are colour matched with the Cooke 5/i, S4/i and miniS4/i ranges, and come equipped with the next generation /i Technology to capture lens metadata. Cooke's anamorphic range is expected to start shipping in Q2 2014.

Industry reaction to the launch of Cooke's anamorphic lenses has been enthusiastic.
Mike Seymour from fxguide.com took the lenses for a brief test drive at NAB 2013 and had this to say: "Cooke has brought to anamorphic lenses the character, warmth and cinematic qualities of a 'Cooke look' lens. They have balanced a crisp new modern look with the key qualities from the past that make you want to shoot with an anamorphic in the first place."

New lens test projector

Cooke will also show its new lens test projector, the first product from a new range of affordable and innovative lens testing equipment designed by Cooke and manufactured by Pure4C, under the brand Cooke Metrology. Many current projectors cannot pass a beam correctly through lenses that are faster than T2. Cooke Metrology's projector is so bright that it can be demonstrated in daylight, making it much easier to discern flaws and artifacts in fast lenses.