Got to play with a Cooke Portrait PS945 lens

[Jonathan Brewer]

I have three images on my website www.imageandartifact.bz done w/the Cooke PS 945, the initial image on the index page, also click on that image which will take you to the copyright statement and another Cooke PS 945 image, and you can also go to the 'infrared' gallery, and click on 'Out of Ivory', where I shot a portrait of my daughter using the Cooke and Maco infrared, it's been digitally manipulated for the obvious effect you see in the final image.

I've had this lens for some time, but I'm still learning how to use it, in a continual search for that 'sweet spot' where everything comes together, which I think/prefer is a 'smooth' look with a glow/sparkle which for every individual shot comes at a certain distance/lighting effect/exposure, or said another way, ...................... there seems to be a certain combination of distance/amount of diffusion/exposure/light ratio where these variables combine w/what the Cooke can give you where the shot 'sparkles', and then the magic disappears as you miss the 'sweet spot'.

As you close down from wide open, there's less of an abrupt transition from the plane of focus to the background, so for me, when you close down a little, things go from soft(which I prefer less and less as I get older) to 'smooth' and 'elegant' from foreground to background.

[Ken Lee]

If we are using digital capture, could this look be attained by using one of the blur "filters" - such as Gaussian Blur ?

If we are shooting film, can this effect be attained by shooting or enlarging through a real filter ?

Or does the lens do something special that cannot be duplicated with other means ?

[David A. Goldfarb]

Gaussian blur never looks like any kind of real effect produced by a lens, and each soft focus lens produces a different effect. There are some effects that are similar to each other, and some less costly ways to produce effects that might be appealing, but I don't see one as a substitute for another.

[Jim collum]

Ken,

short answer is i don't think you can duplicate this with a simple blur. there are a few long essay's i've found on what's going on technially .. you don't really end up with just a blurry/soft image.. the lens still resovles all the detail (in some of the sample, you can see some spider web that was resovled at 1 pixel). i haven't found an action yet that duplicates this 'look'

jim

[Jonathan Brewer]

Per Volquartz has several still lifes shot the Cooke on his website, they show a tactile quality, and a sparkle/glow that you/at least I don't see from other lenses.

Having been obsessed in the past w/the soft look, I had the Mamiya soft focus lens in MF w/the disks, Zeiss Softars, the old Tiffen diffusion 1-5 filters which duplicate smearing vaseline on glass, fogs, double fogs, Tiffen softnets which duplicate a woman's stocking stretched over the lens, the Wollensak Veritar, black toule netting, the Wollensak Velostigmat and so far nothing looks like of a Cooke PS 945 image closed down somewhat.

I've gotten rid of everything except the Velstigmat which I think can produce very interesting nuances when closed down depending on taste, I got the Cooke PS 945, because for several years I couldn't find a Pinkham & Smith, but as always happens, a P&S showed up and I bit on it, it's at S.K. Grimes now, and I plan to shoot mostly w/the Velostigmat, the Cooke, and the Pinkham(from the shots I've seen), because these lenses seem at least to me to give the shot something different than just softness.

I think the issue of comparing these lenses closed down/closed way down to what other lenses do in terms of sharpness is a sort of a 'trap' in that looking at some of Per Volquartz images shot w/the Cooke, there are nuances/values/values in the images shot w/the Cooke, that other lenses wouldn't give the shot, so for me the Cooke is 'sharp enough' to where sharpness isn't an issue, and if it is, then the reverse is true in that the ultra sharp images will never give a shot what the Cooke gives it.

[darr]

"Having been obsessed in the past w/the soft look, I had the Mamiya soft focus lens in MF w/the disks, Zeiss Softars, the old Tiffen diffusion 1-5 filters which duplicate smearing Vaseline on glass, fogs, double fogs, Tiffen softnets which duplicate a woman's stocking stretched over the
lens, the Wollensak Veritar, black toule netting, the Wollensak Velostigmat and so far nothing looks like of a Cooke PS 945 image closed down somewhat."

Add some Cokin diffs, minus the Wollensak and there you have my past SF tool box. I too have came to the same conclusion and thus my ordering of the Cooke.

[darr]

"If we are using digital capture, could this look be attained by using one of the blur "filters" - such as Gaussian Blur ? "

From my experience some of the look I crave comes from the splitting of the light that starts in the beginning of image making and CS2 filters are an after fact. There are some key indicators that can tell how a SF portrait was made when you look at the catch-lights in the pupils or how the surrounding ambient light reacts by haloing, fuzzing, darkening, etc. I am not a light physicist, but I can tell the difference when I see it. The creamy effect of the PS945 and the ability to control it in camera through aperture from zero to heavy makes me want to run with one. I did use a series of Tallyn filters with a double Lindahl system that worked for a while when I got tired of the Softar look. I think the bottom line is probably a matter of taste with the type of composition.

[Frank Petronio]

If you have a nice SF image to begin with, the Photoshop's Gaussian Blur filter can be used with gradiated and/brushstroke application to sleectively increase the blur where appropriate. But the key is to already have some nice bokeh to begin with. It would be really hard (impossible) to duplicate the look a lens from a perfectly sharp clinical shot.

[Steve J Murray]

Just a side note: a fellow on pnet/Nikon forum posted some interesting photos taken with a older 50mm 1.4 Nikkor that had been lightly sandblasted, which resulted in a rather unique look of softness.

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

Has anyone done a comparison between the Cooke PS945, or the Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality IV and a Universal Heliar, or the older Cooke ("knuckle") portrait lenses? I'd be interested in seeing the results of such a comparison. The Universal Heliar and the older Cookes have movable center elements that can be used to dial in more or less sperical aberration as desired.

Kerry