What happened to Cooke's 70mm film lenses from the 1930s?

[Geffen Avraham]

In the November 1930 issue of International Photographer, Cooke advertises a series of Speed Panchros capable of covering 65mm and 70mm film, for use with the Fox Grandeur camera.

Does anyone know anything about these lenses? Do they still exist somewhere? With the rise of digital large-format, they may come in useful.

[Geffen Avraham]

The missing holy grail of this set appears to be the 47mm f2, not to be mistaken with the more common 47mm f2.5.

I have not been able to find any evidence of it ever changing hands on the internet, or even existing past the 1930s.

Edited September 23 by Geffen Avraham

[Dom Jaeger]

Who knows what happened to those lenses. I suspect Cooke didn’t make all that many. There were only about ten 65mm Grandeur Mitchells made, and the whole format died almost as soon as it was launched. 

Some may have been repurposed in the 50s when Cooke made DuoPanchros and Double Speed Panchros for VistaVision and the new 65mm fad. There are a few sets of those around, some rehoused by TLS. 

[Jeff Bernstein]

☞ Scrooby guesses that Joseph Walker may have had one. ¶ Joe Walker’s hobby is collecting lenses. . . . He knows, from exhaustive study and tests, that this particular Cooke will perform this way, while that individual Cooke—apparently of the same design and manufacture—will act differently under such-and-such conditions. He has the industry’s largest individually-owned collection of lenses. American Cinematographer, April 1941 ¶ Walker’s estate material is now at the ASC Museum in Hollywood—including his collection of 600 lenses.

[Jeff Bernstein]

28:17. And I’m like, okay. . . . So I started going through it. And there was just, there were 600 lenses, right?

[Steve Switaj]

Not lenses for the Fox Grandeur system, but here's a  page on the ASC site about rehousing a set of vintage Todd-AO lenses from the   second wave of 65mm in the 50's.

  https://theasc.com/asc-todd-ao-lenses/

I'm sure there are a million technical reasons I'm not privy to, but it seems unfortunate ZeroOptik could supply  swappable mounts for PV, PL and LPL, but not for BNCR, which, as I recall, is kind of the default mount for a lot of the 65mm cameras of the 60's and 70's (except the Arri 765, I think that used it's own giant PL variant).

I'm happy that someone can use these lenses again, but there's a certain sad irony if the rehoused glass that ushered in the early days of 65mm film... cant' actually fit on a 65mm film camera anymore. 

 

  

[Daniel J. Fox]

On 10/1/2026 at 3:08 AM, Steve Switaj said:

Not lenses for the Fox Grandeur system, but here's a  page on the ASC site about rehousing a set of vintage Todd-AO lenses from the   second wave of 65mm in the 50's.

  https://theasc.com/asc-todd-ao-lenses/

I'm sure there are a million technical reasons I'm not privy to, but it seems unfortunate ZeroOptik could supply  swappable mounts for PV, PL and LPL, but not for BNCR, which, as I recall, is kind of the default mount for a lot of the 65mm cameras of the 60's and 70's (except the Arri 765, I think that used it's own giant PL variant).

I'm happy that someone can use these lenses again, but there's a certain sad irony if the rehoused glass that ushered in the early days of 65mm film... cant' actually fit on a 65mm film camera anymore. 

 

  

Rather than use BNCR, I believe the Todd-AO 65mm lenses had their own custom lens mount that required the lenses to be physically bolted onto the cameras... this is certainly the case for the lenses that the ASC had rehoused.

That said, if anyone wants Todd-AO 65mm lenses on BNCR, I have a pair for sale.

[Geffen Avraham]

Visited the ASC today, they told me most of the Walker collection is not in their museum. Spoke to Richard Edlund who converted one of the Grandeur cameras to 5/65, but sadly with no leads so far on the Cookes. I will continue searching.

Edited Saturday at 12:53 AM by Geffen Avraham