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Achieving Elegance in Medium Format
- Author: Sam Jorgensen
Cooke and Cine Visuals Present: Cooke Panchro 65/i
Cinematic Heritage
In order to understand the Cooke Panchro 65/i, let’s dive into the legendary history of the “Cooke Look”. Founded in the 1890s, by the 1920s Cooke had been deeply integrated into the film industry. Many people know the talkies were a great disruptor and brought an end to many classic silent-film era techniques. Many actors couldn’t make the transition. The same goes for lens manufacturers. Cinema-specific demands required more light than traditional photography, which could be met by powerful and bright arc lights. However, these lights were loud (and rather dangerous) and greatly interfered with the sound equipment of the day. Tungsten lights were used in favor of arc lights, but were significantly less bright. Panchromatic film was sensitive to light across the visible light spectrum, and though developed in 1905, the technology was difficult and expensive. Most motion picture film stocks were only sensitive to certain ranges of blue and green hues – known as Orthochromatic film. In order to increase light sensitivity, Eastman Kodak developed a way to mass produce panchromatic film, which became wildly popular as a much easier form of filmmaking.
While Eastman Kodak amongst other film stock makers would invest in panchromatic film, Cooke invested time into glass. Horace W. Lee studied previous designs and created the Opic Series that were significantly faster than previous cinema lenses – a speedy f/2.0. However, when panchromatic film grew in popularity, it became clear that lenses would show a great deal of chromatic aberrations and more intense flaring, which had previously been concealed due to the lack of colors that orthochromatic film captured. Lee took his designs, and quickly worked to solve this problem. He predicted that panchromatic film would soon allow for the sought after invention of color film and wanted his new designs to withstand that change, thinking it may be a similar shake-up as the talkies were. In 1927, he came out with the Cooke Panchros (short for panchromatic) that solved a number of these chromatic aberration issues. They became an instant hit and soon the standard in Hollywood for the next 30+ years. Lee continued his work on the Panchros, increasing their speed and ease of use with development of the Speed Panchros, Super Speed Panchros, and Ultra Speed Panchros which could be as fast as f/1.3. When Technicolor and Kodak color stocks did come to fruition, cinematographers were blown away by the color rendition of the Cooke Panchros. These early designs were all uncoated and later on lens innovators improved on Lee’s designs by creating the Coated Cooke Panchros and moving from f-stops to more precise T-stops, however these also affected Lee’s signature look. They combined these coatings with rare Earth elements to greatly increase the refraction of light within the glass while preserving the classic color rendition. These Coated Cooke Panchros, often now simply the Cooke Panchros or Speed Panchros, are what define the well-known Cooke Look. Natural skin tones, gentle aberrations, pleasing focus fall-off, with a warmth that brings that filmic quality to lenses, much of what defined the late-silent film era and Technicolor era comes from these lenses.
The late 20th century saw a turn towards sharper and cleaner lenses to continually improve on the optical flaws in lenses. With the precision ability of computers and digital cinema cameras, a sharpness came that caused cinematographers to turn to vintage glass to mess up these perfections, to bring an organic feeling back to their images. Additionally, the rise of Full Frame digital sensors and a growing resurgence in the popularity of shooting 65mm film, IMAX film, and even VistaVision have left cinematographers looking for lenses that can cover these large formats. Cooke notoriously listens to the needs of filmmakers.
Released in late 2025, Cooke brought an answer to these needs to the film industry. The Cooke Panchros 65/i. Returning to their roots, they took their classic Speed Panchro glass and went to work. Tweaking until they found the balance in focus falloff, warmth, and organic touch – they brought that classic Cooke Look to the world of 65mm.
Image Fidelity & Focus
Gentle focus fall-off and controlled imperfections add a subtle and romantic character. Cooke Panchro 65/i lack the surgical sharpness that comes with many modern Full Frame or Medium Format glass, made to be clean to cover such a large area. Instead, they bring the Panchro painterly quality into the image that brings warmth into skin-tones and a graceful nature to faces. Focus transitions softly from the center without any clear hard wall that brings a poetic quality that without distracting from the subjects. Known to create a delicate and poetic balance between center sharpness and edge focus, the Cooke Look is now brought to the modern world of large format cinematography. The Panchros pair well with the dyes and grain contained in film, dialed in to bring the same look and feel that the Panchros bring to 35mm up to 65mm, accounting for the rise in resolution and scale of image. This same organic quality helps to smooth digital sharpness bringing a softer feeling back into the image. In essence, the Panchros breathe the life of tactile, classic, legacy filmmaking back into a large format cyber-world. Hailing to their vintage ancestors, the Panchro 65/is are low to medium contrast that allows for the capture of a smooth latitude of colors across the image that help bring out a richness of depth from the capture format for cinematographers.
Handling & Adaptability
While the Cooke Panchros have been given modern housings by Cooke for 35mm and Full Frame coverage, this is the first time they have ever made it to 65mm coverage, and now with excellent modern housings. Now the Cooke Panchro line is accessible across a wide range of formats, from the light and compact E mount SP3s for small gimbal work all the way up to now the PL mount Cooke 65/i for medium format cinematography. With the lenses having an average weight of about 4 lbs, these robust lenses with large enough glass to cover 65mm formats come in an incredibly lightweight setup. The length of the lenses averages out from end-to-end at 6 inches, giving plenty of room for Camera Assistants to work while also being in a nice compact size for how much glass is in these lenses. Often, setups that have either sensor sizes this large or 65mm film cameras are already quite bulky and heavy. Having lenses that are both lightweight and in an ideal size helps tremendously with workflow as well as giving operators flexibility in their work. Speaking of workflow, with a consistent 110 front diameter across all focal lengths, lens swaps will be fast creating more time on set and reducing time spent performing camera adjustments. Cooke is also known for their incredible embedded metadata technology, which is especially useful in VFX, color, and other post production workflows. Saving time and headaches for the cinematographer, colorist, and VFX artist are incredible boons and Cooke has provided this same tech into the Cooke Panchros 65/i.
Image Circle
Bringing the Cooke Panchros – along with the iconic Cooke Look – to the large format world is a gift for cinematographers. Now covering a true 65mm format, the image circle is 59.86mm. That covers a wide range of 65mm medium format cameras including:
- The ARRI Alexa 65 and Alexa 265 which have sensor sizes of 54.12 x 25.58mm.
- The Fujifilm GFX Eterna 55 (available here at Cine Visuals for rental) with a sensor size of 43.8 x 23.32mm.
- The Blackmagic URSA Cine 17k with a sensor size of 50.81 x 23.32mm
- 5-Perf 65mm film with an area of 52.63 x 23.01mm.
- 8-Perf VistaVision 35mm film with an area of 37.39 x 25.32mm
- And all Full Frame and Super 35mm digital sensors and film stocks.
With the many options of Medium Format/65mm filmmaking, the Cooke Panchro 65/i brings all the beauty of the Cooke Look into the modern world for any camera a cinematographer may need.
Flare & Bokeh
Bokeh has a swirly and contained cat-eyed roundness. Gently shifting from circles in the center to bent crescents on the edges without drawing attention to themselves. Unlike the famous octagonal bokeh of their S4 cousins, the Panchros maintain a circular and crescent form even stopped down, although the cat-eye edges begin to squeeze themselves into small form-fitting circles after a few stops. Their beauty and legacy is unmatched and calls back to the early days of classic Hollywood. Creamy in the center with a childlike limbal circle on the edges, the bokeh is distinctive without being distracting. Chromatic aberrations within the lens are most apparent in the flaring, which brings a charismatic glow through the image without dissolving into a milky blob. A quiet star with long arms is formed when lights directly hit the frame without bringing the flare across the whole image, adding texture with subtlety. Carefully crafted neutral coatings bring flares that are white with a touch of the color of light they come from, giving cinematographers an elegance in their frames.
These lenses are available for rent at Cine Visuals. For inquiries or testing appointments email info@cinevisuals.com or call (323) 244-2552.