Best practices for soft focus lenses?

[peter brooks]

Your 'Thomas Hobson Cooke Series II 15" f/4.5 knuckler' will be a 'Taylor Hobson Cooke Series II 15" f/4.5 knuckler'.

Taylor, Taylor & Hobson (TTH) licensed the triplet design from T Cooke and Sons of York, but there was never a company called 'Cooke' producing them. The modern day Cooke Optics website (Cooke Optics Ltd was incorprated in 1998) tends to give the impression that there was. That website used to have a fine section on the history of the varous TTH lenses, but it has now sadly disappeared. Of course TTH marketed the Cooke brand vigorously, and it became a household name and a byword for excellence (as it still is, no doubt).

Both of your Series II lens are likely to be fairly mild in terms of softness, even on the maximum 'soft' setting. I have heard that the knucklers are slightly softer but I don't have one to compare. I think they were intended to soften portraiture rather than give a pictorialism style 'arty' softness in the way that other soft focus lenses do.

Great collection of lenses. If you take the advice to shoot them at no more than +1 stop max then I would focus them at the taking aperture, they should be bright enough, and you might stand more chance of WYSIWYG (or maybe not!)

Lastly you probably know this already but the Kodak badged Ilex #5 used for the 305mm Ektar has different threads to the standard Ilex #5. Getting the shutter you have repaired might be the best bet, the Kodak badged ons will be like hen's teeth.

[peter brooks]

(The 'Compendium' is still on the Cooke Optics website at https://cookeoptics.com/compendium/ but is a shadow of it's former self - it used to have images from the old catalogues, and a far more readable format, especially the serial number examples at the bottom of each section).

BTW do your TTH Series II serial numbers appear in Karl French's spreadsheet? I don't know if Karl is still active on the list.

[djdister]

Getting back to part of the original question, try to include specular highlights or even light sources in your soft focus shots - that is another place the soft focus effect really shines

[Jim Andrada]

+1 to highlights - chrome can be really interesting.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

All the suggestions for lighting and not stopping down the lenses more than a stop or stop and a half are what I'd recommend as well. Study the works of those that were suggested and have fun. Shoot the slowest film you can and by all means have fun. Each lens will have a sweet spot. Find it and never change the F-stop and you are golden. These two images are shot with half a Hermagis Endoscope 150mm F4.5 rear mounted in a Compeer shutter 1/2 stop past wide open at about F10. Both are 8x10 contact prints.

[Scott Davis]

Don't worry about the physical condition of your Cooke lenses - they had some wizards in their glass foundry and produced some of the best glass ever. I have a 10.5" Cooke Series II f4.5 that looks like it spent decades as a dog's chew toy - all the bright brass has been worn down, the blacking on the aperture ring is gone, and both front and rear elements have scratches in them you can catch a fingernail on. I gave it a torture test when I first got it - photographed at night, in the rain, with neon lights in the frame, shot wide open. If I didn't tell you about the issues with the lens, you'd NEVER know. No flare, no distortion, no ghost lines, nothing.

[Kiwi7475]

All the suggestions for lighting and not stopping down the lenses more than a stop or stop and a half are what I'd recommend as well. Study the works of those that were suggested and have fun. Shoot the slowest film you can and by all means have fun. Each lens will have a sweet spot. Find it and never change the F-stop and you are golden. These two images are shot with half a Hermagis Endoscope 150mm F4.5 rear mounted in a Compeer shutter 1/2 stop past wide open at about F10. Both are 8x10 contact prints.

These are really great. Does the endoscope 150mm really cover 8x10? Or are you digitally printing the negative to 8x10 from a smaller size to contact print?

[Mark Sawyer]

Beating Jim to the reply, he posted "These two images are shot with half a Hermagis Endoscope 150mm F4.5". That would be about 300mm and f/9. Many lenses are convertibles.

[Kiwi7475]

Beating Jim to the reply, he posted "These two images are shot with half a Hermagis Endoscope 150mm F4.5". That would be about 300mm and f/9. Many lenses are convertibles.

Got it— I missed the “half”, that makes sense now. Thank you!

[Mark Sawyer]

Got it— I missed the “half”, that makes sense now. Thank you!

That got me at first too. And I didn't even know Hermagis made an endoscope...