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Hi Peter - Go to the Cooke Compendium at Cookeoptics.com, About Us, Lens History section. Go to Series II, f/4.5 Portrait lens. See the spec table for 10.5 inch. That is your lens. There have been...

Great! I didn't miss it after all. It looks like I put it in the general history section years ago.

Not easily. The serial number books no longer exist before 1940. None of the leather books after that date are digitized.

Hi Steven -- You are obviously a history buff, so I welcome you to take a look at https://cookeoptics.com/t/history.html. It will give you more detailed information about how the Cooke name was...

Mark - If the Cooke Achromatic Portrait Lens had appeared in any Cooke catalogue, I would have included it. I'm pretty confident that we have all the Cooke lens catalogues that were published. ...

Karl - Your lens is now added to the XIV list and I changed the introduction date of this lens from c. 1935 to 1933. Thanks!

I will check and see what I can find. What I CAN state is that it was made with 3 elements when it was first came out in 1924. Either that, or the it was a typo in the 1924 catalog.

It took years of part time work to compile, but the Cooke Compendium is finally published at the Cooke Optics website under tab "About Us," then "Lens History."
Direct link: ...

Hi there! The reason the Taylor Hobson television lenses are not on the Cooke Optics website in the history section is because the TV lenses were never annointed with the 'Cooke' name. They are...

Hi All, I thought I would step up and offer some information to help you identify your vintage Cooke lenses. I will make this as short as possible. I'm the archivist (among other things) at Cooke...

Hi everyone - thought I'd jump into your discussion with some details about the new Cooke Portrait PS945 lens, since I'm one of the instigators at Cooke who thought up the idea of making a modern ...

Thanks for your suggestions, Tim. I'm adding that to our file!

Kerry - You're worth your weight in valuable information! The Series VIIB does appear to be a popular lens on the used market and I've heard requests from other people as well to have Cooke...

Tim, You're right, it's good Bokeh -- very good Bokeh. Using the Cooke PS945 lens, when you focus, say on a woman's face -- her eyes -- aperture wide open at f/4.5, the out of focus areas, like her...

Australia! I certainly walked into that one, didn't I?! Could you be any farther away from New Mexico? I agree, getting at least a couple images up on our website that show at least a couple...

Hello Renee, to respond to your first question: I don't know if Edward Weston used Pinkham & Smiths lenses. His name did not come up in my research. He could very well have used them, but I don't...

Hi all, Actually, your concern that our new Cooke Portrait PS945 lens will not cover the format adequately is unwarranted. Mark Osterman, process historian at the Eastman House put the lens through...

Hi Eugene, Being the non-technical person I am, I can repsond to your questions from my perspective. Cooke decided to make it's first lens for large format photography in 50 years for 4x5 format...

The new Cooke Portrait PS945 lens is a modern reproduction of the rare Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality Series IV soft focus lens. Cooke lenses were designed and made large format lenses in England...