Cooke Lenses and Zeiss

January 12, 2006

Hello I have a shoot coming up and I am on a liited budget. I may have the extra money to rent 2 cooke s4 lenses the camera I have has a set of zeiss primes. If I got the cookes I was thinking of a 25 and a 80 or something. Can I still use the zeiss 9.8 wide lens or will the shots looks really different. I guess my question is how bad is it to mix the lenses.

Stephen Williams · January 12, 2006

Hello I have a shoot coming up and I am on a liited budget. I may have the extra money to rent 2 cooke s4 lenses the camera I have has a set of zeiss primes. If I got the cookes I was thinking of a 25 and a 80 or something. Can I still use the zeiss 9.8 wide lens or will the shots looks really different. I guess my question is how bad is it to mix the lenses.

Hi,

If you are finishing with telecine or DI using different lenses is less of an issue. The 2 new S16mm S4 lenses from Cooke are very new, so I am sure this has been done before! A cut from a 9.8mm to 25 or 80mm is a big change in any case.

Stephen

Max Jacoby · January 12, 2006

Are you shooting in Super 16, since you are referring to a 9.8mm lens? I presume you are talking about the 9.5mm lens.

Cooke S4s are not as sharp ass Zeiss lenses, so it might be a good idea to rent 2 longer Cooke lenses to shoot close-ups. They look very nice on faces, with better contrasts than the Zeiss and their lack of sharpness is not so apparent there.

January 12, 2006

Are you shooting in Super 16, since you are referring to a 9.8mm lens? I presume you are talking about the 9.5mm lens.

Cooke S4s are not as sharp ass Zeiss lenses, so it might be a good idea to rent 2 longer Cooke lenses to shoot close-ups. They look very nice on faces, with better contrasts than the Zeiss and their lack of sharpness is not so apparent there.

Hi guys sorry I didnt mention I am shooting super 35. This is a period piece so I want the softer image but I cant afford a complete set of cookes

JA Tadena · January 12, 2006

Hello I have a shoot coming up and I am on a liited budget. I may have the extra money to rent 2 cooke s4 lenses the camera I have has a set of zeiss primes. If I got the cookes I was thinking of a 25 and a 80 or something. Can I still use the zeiss 9.8 wide lens or will the shots looks really different. I guess my question is how bad is it to mix the lenses.

I really wouldnt use a 9.8mm to cut to any s4 cooke lens unless I really need the effect of a 9.8mm distortion or a really wide "music video"(close to fisheye effect) look which the s4 cooke lenses don't give you. Besides I dont think you wanna cut from a 9.8mm to a longer lens in a scene because it would look a little abrupt in terms of "camera story telling". I think the 9.8mm creates an unrealistic wide angle compared to other lenses above 12-14mm.

Plus personally, I wouldnt mix S4 Cookes with Zeiss primes. I'd rather just NOT rent out the 2pcs of S4 lenses and probably grab a whole set of Ultra primes instead or just stick with the Regular primes if they're still too expensive.

Edited January 12, 2006 by jatadena

Max Jacoby · January 12, 2006

What Zeiss lenses EXACTLY are you using? To my knowledge there is no 9.8mm Zeiss lens, there is an Ultra Prime 10mm and an 8mm and a Standard 10mm. If you are using the older Zeiss Standards, then intercutting with CookeS4s would be less of an issue.

Mitch Gross · January 13, 2006

The only 9.8mm I know is the ancient Kinoptik, the equivalent to the 5.7mm in 16 format. This is a very old lens with tons of distortion, flaring, color shift (it is very warm), low resolution and low contrast. I wouldn't worry about matching anything to it as it also distorts the image wildly. Terry Gilliam loves this old lens.