Cooke Panchro Prime vs Zeiss Compact Prime

Yeah as a Nikon glass fan myself, that is rather hard to swallow.

Different price points though too.

If you have the money, Panchros are a no brainer.
 
Well I don't find the Nikon lenses or the CPs to be worthy of use on the F3. I would rank the stock Sony lenses above either of those, but I like my Cine-Xenars best.
 
I say neither, I'd look into some faster lenses for the price of a new set of cookes. You can find VERY nice lens packages used with zeiss/arri or similar. I don't care how fast camera sensitivities will get, if you can't get the more shallow look you want passed an F2.6 (T2.8) on the prime, you'll have to rent another lens anyway. You can always stop down a lenss to 2.8, but never open wider if thats what you're stuck at. You have to think... for the rest of your shooting life, are you going to wanna keep these? Is that restriction something you're gonna wanna live at, with that large of a price?

Trust me, I've offered kits with the cookes at t2.8 and I have never once had someone want them over a good set of superspeeds. For the money superspeeds will never let you down, they might be a little bit softer, but it will never hurt you. lighting exteriors with a t2.8 restriction even at iso 1600 is a big pain. Huge difference at T1.3

Faster is still king once you realize how much more effort it will take to light a whole damn street, vs. just opening up the stop. There is a lot of great glass out there if you're willing to look, you dont wanna spend $30k plus on lenses only to run into a situation where you need to rent faster lenses... kinda defeats the point.

ohh and I too give a little vote up for RED lenses, might not be as colored or mechanical as cookes, but they are pretty nice, and damn cheap for what you get for a whole set. Consistency in Tstop is also nice with them.
 
Disagree about the 2.8.

I feel, I wouldn't want to compromise the remaining 90% of my shoot optically, for the sake of the rare occasion I'm shooting an unlit night exterior.

You have to remeber, by making the lens a 2.8 cooke can make the optical quality much higher, and into the league of their S4's and i5's. Way I see it, 90% of my shoots are fully lit with a 5ton truck, I want the best lenses I can get for those sitations.
 
I am very happy with my Cp2 set. I have the 21mm 2.8, but that has never been a problem. I don´t like to shoot 2.1 on these or any other lenses and specially not for the big screen. I used to have a zeiss super speed 1.3 set. But I found shooting full open 1.3 not to be a good idea and not the style I like in my pictures.

Doug: What do you meam about "Well I don't find the Nikon lenses or the CPs to be worthy of use on the F3"?

Roger
 
Last edited:
FilmDude said:
Trust me, I've offered kits with the cookes at t2.8 and I have never once had someone want them over a good set of superspeeds. For the money superspeeds will never let you down, they might be a little bit softer, but it will never hurt you. lighting exteriors with a t2.8 restriction even at iso 1600 is a big pain. Huge difference at T1.3
Click to expand...

A nice little exterior night work by Norm Li with an Epic-M at 48-60fps, 500-800 ASA.


FilmDude said:
Trust me, I've offered kits with the cookes at t2.8 and I have never once had someone want them over a good set of superspeeds. For the money superspeeds will never let you down, they might be a little bit softer, but it will never hurt you. lighting exteriors with a t2.8 restriction even at iso 1600 is a big pain. Huge difference at T1.3
Click to expand...

Not going to hurt you? Having a set of Master Primes, Cooke 5/i's, or similar won't hurt you. Many superspeed sets will hurt you. They aren't sharp wide-open at T/1.3. I was a camera assistant on a feature where we kept going overshedule on exteriors and be shooting into twilight, the time of day where you can still see but it's after sunset. The DP kept opening the lens instead of dialing up the iso. When we finallly were shooting at T/1.3, he kept whispering for me to focus, as he thought I was just slightly soft. I kept telling him we were in focus. He finally grabbed the follow focus wheel himself and dialed focus in. Needless to say, I was focused properly and he was shocked to find just how soft SS's were wide open. I would never ever tell anyone that SS's wide open would never hurt you. When it comes to superspeeds, it's a trade off. Noticeable resolving loss versus light gain. Simple as that. I don't recall what generation we were using on that, but I've used many sets of superspeeds since and noticed the same thing. With superspeeds, you need to stop down to a T/2 or T/2.8 to start getting competitive with sharpness. You don't get cake and eat it too, as you do with MP's.
 
Last edited:
True ryan,

The thing that Cooke for some bizarre reason doesn't advertise is that the panchros are 90% of their peak sharpness wide open. They peak at 2.8/4 split.

Meaning where as with most lenses you have to stop down anyway, the cookes ar giving you the goods right away. Making them far more workable than it seems on paper.

The CP's, which I had for 7 months,needed to be stopped down to a T4 to be sharp. Especially the 18mm and 25mm wich needed to be @ T5.6 to look decent.

Its really important to test, not look at specs. There is a reason the iPanchros won the shoot out last month. No they aren't the fastest, but they are by far the most consistent from wide open to T11, and provide a "higher level" of performance. (Even T16 but you start getting diffraction, T22 is pretty soft)

I mean, on paper the C300 is a joke, but in reality, it produces a beautiful picture.
 
TimurCivan said:


Cooke bokeh. Varotal 18-100 T3.

The lenses are designed to gently roll into focus and then out again. Where as Zeiss lenses have an infinitly sharp single plane of focus, the cookes have a broader but not quite as molecular sharpness. You could almost say the "dof" is deeper, but its not quite like that.... Angeniuex lenses are similar in that sense.

The xenars optcally are nice, but i dont like them mechanically.
Click to expand...


I don´t like this lens....it breathes terribly and the focus movement is to say the least jerky...I can easily have an image like this with any old canon zoom lens... :shocked:
 
kikojiu said:
I don´t like this lens....it breathes terribly and the focus movement is to say the least jerky...I can easily have an image like this with any old canon zoom lens... :shocked:
Click to expand...

Im guessing you are basing your statement on a quick test posted rather than any actual hands on experience with a properly setup Cooke 18-100 lens? As my experience shooting with both the Cooke 18-100 & 20-100 are very different than your assumptions.

All the Best!

Dave
 
kikojiu said:
I don´t like this lens....it breathes terribly and the focus movement is to say the least jerky...I can easily have an image like this with any old canon zoom lens... :shocked:
Click to expand...

I can say that my Cooke 20-100mm hardly breaths at all (tiny bit widest) and the focus movement is smooth.

I think what you are mistaking is that the cooke's have a focus throw of something like 300+ degrees. If you just grab the lens and try to focus from longest to shortest you have to move your hand a few times to do the full turn. That will look jerky.

However, since they will focus as close as 2.5 feet and infinity, you'll just about never go from closest to farthest in one movement. If you need to do that they are often bracketed for a motor.
 
David W. Jones said:
Im guessing you are basing your statement on a quick test posted rather than any actual hands on experience with a properly setup Cooke 18-100 lens? As my experience shooting with both the Cooke 18-100 & 20-100 are very different than your assumptions.

All the Best!

Dave
Click to expand...


Ok Dave...I am not assuming anything I am stating from what I see here. Probably I should have written "I don´t like this lens from what I see here...but if someone is trying to prove a point should do it on the best conditions. Perhaps using a FF to focus with a smooth motion? Probably setting everything up right? Anyway the lens breathes a lot... Yhis is a characteristic of the lens and not a defect. Simply is a characteristic I don´t like :undecided
I have some experience in this field (25 years and own over 100 lenses) and I have a pretty good idea of what I like... If you ask me between a Zeiss MP and Cooke S4i I would choose Zeiss everytime. Of course they have diferent looks (image wise of course) and probably if I had the money I would like to have an S4 set. But only as a complement because I wouldn´t invest a serious amount of money on a 2.0 set if I could have 1.3 for the same money...or perhaps the S5´s. People take criticism very personally I don´t know why. What matters is what each one likes and thinks it works for themselves. I often see amazing images shot with DSLR´s and cheap photo lenses...and the best part is that they intercut very nicely with top of the range stuff. I don´t shoot film anymore and to be honest I don´t care...Actually the digital it is much more skill demanding than what film used to be. If you make a mistake in digital it is much more dificult to recover (can´t be undone sometimes...)
Anyway thank you for the exchange of ideas
 
What ever, it's just been my hands on experience with 4 different Cooke 20-100 & 3 different Cooke 18-100 lenses that the breathing on these lenses are very very minimal, and when using a zoom motor and controller the zooming is ultra smooth. If you have been working professionally for 25 years, and own 100 lenses, I would assume by now you would have learned to not judge quality by a on line video. Which is why I suggest not judging cameras & lenses by videos posted on line as you never really know the conditions, as opposed to doing a hands on evaluation. It's kind of like saying... "I don't like the Porsche Turbo Carrera, as the shifting is not smooth and the ride is unstable" based on watching a Youtube video rather than driving the car. Since you are basing your opinion on others work with this lens, you might also take into consideration some of the many many films shot using Cooke zooms for scenes including the Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Big Love, The Village, Munich, Gangs of New York, and Band of Brothers to name just a few.

All the Best!
Dave
 
Last edited:
David W. Jones said:
What ever, it's just been my hands on experience with 4 different Cooke 20-100 & 3 different Cooke 18-100 lenses that the breathing on these lenses are very very minimal, and when using a zoom motor and controller the zooming is ultra smooth. If you have been working professionally for 25 years, and own 100 lenses, I would assume by now you would have learned to not judge quality by a on line video. Which is why I suggest not judging cameras & lenses by videos posted on line as you never really know the conditions, as opposed to doing a hands on evaluation. It's kind of like saying... "I don't like the Porsche Turbo Carrera, as the shifting is not smooth and the ride is unstable" based on watching a Youtube video rather than driving the car. Since you are basing your opinion on others work with this lens, you might also take into consideration some of the many many films shot using Cooke zooms for scenes including the Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Big Love, The Village, Munich, Gangs of New York, and Band of Brothers to name just a few.

All the Best!
Dave
Click to expand...

If you have read my comment I am not judging the lens I am judging the way it was shot. If someone with a Cooke lens wants to show spmething should do it the best possible. I said the focusing is jerky ( I don´t know if hand focused or not but jerky) the lens in my opinion breathes no matter if it is a Cooke or other lens...sorry. Quality can be deceiving on the internet (compression artifacts, resolution, CA, noise, grain etc...) but not Breathing and jerky movements. But this is my opinion not a law...You posted I comment...this is why people post no? I don´t care which lenses I use as long as I have the look I need. Sometimes Zeiss other Cooke, Leica, Lomo, Angenieux, Tokina, RED, and Canon and Nikon and Lensbaby. The make is not important I just choose my look. I respect Cooke as much as Zeiss or any other. The movies you mentioned are not among my favourites but I am not criticising the image which is in fact amazing...What we do is art and everyone is right. Just a matter of choice or opinion.


All the best to you too.

Augusto

P.S. - As soon as I can (money and availabilty) I will try to purchase a set of S5´s...I love them... ;-) Last time I spoke to Cooke people the waiting list was over one year...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top