Coating a Cooke Portrait Lens, is there any benefit?

[Jim Noel]

You're right, I haven't shot with it in colour but have been meaning to do so just to see. From what I've read previously though I thought uncoated lenses did something weird to colours, but then again I've never tried it to see for myself.

Uncoated lenses don't do anything "weird" to the colors. A little less contrast and a little more flare makes a better looking image in my view.

[ic-racer]

Perhaps you are mistaking coating and chromatic aberration. A coated lens has less flare and a 'color' lens has less chromatic aberration.

[Vaughn]

Perhaps just keeping a good lens hood on the lens might satisfy the desire to coat it.

[Jim Graves]

I'm curious ... where do get a lens professionally cleaned ... is this a normal service of most camera repair shops?

[Colin D]

Ok I found a discussion on this topic on the site from 2004 that seemed to confirm what is being said here, no need to coat the lens unless more contrast or less flare is needed. That satisfies my query, all that is needed now is to get some samples happening.

Thanks

[goamules]

If coatings caused weird things to color film, it would have been a problem for 35mm cameras, which had coated lenses since the 1950s. All lenses were coated post WWII, and there weren't "black and white" and "color" lenses.

[richardman]

I have taken plenty color photos with my old Cooke 7 1/2". It's less contrasty for sure, but works well. Just use it to take photos, don't worry about it. Light has not changed in 100 years :-)

[Paddy McKay]

I also had a lens recoated at Arax years ago: a 270mm G-Claron, but for some reason never ended up shooting with it. See my thread on this forum for more info. It clearly has more contrast now, compared to just a single coating. As many others have pointed out before, for B&W, some people prefer single and/or uncoated lenses for their inherently lower contrast. It helps the shadows to remain a bit more open, and printable. It really all comes down to a personal preference for how one wants to render the image. For colour work, I really love contrasty modern lenses, especially the exquisite Zeiss glass for my Nikon.

[Pete Oakley]

Don't know if this is of any use in this thread but I took this with an old uncoated meniscus lens removed from a clapped out Kodak Box Brownie (1920's) and mounted into a Copal Press shutter. This is from a 6x9 roll film back but the lens does cover 4x5.
Pete.

[Peter De Smidt]

The more glass/air surfaces the lens has, the more coating those surfaces will make a difference.