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Cooke Optics Presents New Cooke Portrait PS945 Prototype Lens to Paul Wilson Great Grandson of Pinkham & Smith Company Founder Helped Cooke Uncover Optical "Secrets" with Loan of Vintage Lenses from Personal Collection By Barbara Lowry Chelmsford, Massachusetts (August 2, 2002) - The hot sun beat down on Paul Wilson's house in Chelmsford with no indication that conditions would change dramatically after representatives from Cooke Optics arrived at his front door on August 2 for an historic torch-passing ceremony. Over the past year, Cooke Optics had been working with Paul Wilson's vintage Pinkham & Smith lens collection with the goal of reproducing the signature Pinkham & Smith soft focus effect in the form of a modern lens for contemporary film types. The result of CookeÕs labors: the new Cooke Portrait PS945, 229mm lens for 4x5 inch large format photography. The new lens is made of modern glass, multicoated, and color-corrected for black and white and color and matches the original characteristics of the vintage lens exactly. CookeÕs multicoating process minimizes flare and ghosting, which is especially crucial when backlighting a subject. The lens is supplied mounted in a Copal 3 shutter. Paul Wilson's great grandfather, William F. Pinkham, co-founder of the Pinkham & Smith Co., and PinkhamÕs partner, Henry Smith, made their first soft focus lens in Boston in 1887 according to famed photographer, F. Holland Day's exacting specifications. Over the next several years, word spread amongst impressionist photographers of the time including the legendary, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Eduard Steichen, Clarence White and Alfred Stieglitz. F. Holland Day's delight with his first lens made specifically for soft focus photography caught the attention of the others, beginning with Coburn. The photographic masters noted above used "Smith" lenses to create fine art. The Pinkham & Smith Company continued to design photographic lenses into the 1940s. By the end of his career, Alvin Langdon Coburn owned twelve of them; more than any other lens brand. The original Pinkham & Smith lenses are rare and are held especially dear by lens collectors and photographers regardless of condition. With the resurgence and new-found respect for the compelling look of soft focus images, Cooke was especially keen to produce its first large format lens in a half a century for a specialty market with visual characteristics that contemporary photographers would value far and away above others. Cooke has always listened to their customers and created lens designs that optically and mechanically respond to their needs. As a result, the special soft focus look created with the vintage Pinkham & Smith lenses won out over the look of other soft focus lenses, even above vintage Cooke Portrait lenses Ð an amazing outcome considering that the visual preferences and unique approach of individual photographers to their art run the spectrum. Other factors that prompted Cooke to resurrect an original design from extinction is because the original P&S lenses were so revered by the old masters and because they are becoming scarce and are in questionable condition due to age and handling. "From left: Paul Wilson, great grandson of William F. Pinkham, founder of the Pinkham & Smith Company, Boston and Mark Gerchman, chief optical designer of Cooke Optics Limited, England, talking about the new Cooke Portrait PS945 lens. Mr. Gerchman, shown holding the new lens, presented Mr. Wilson with serial number 0000 at his home in Chelmsford in recognition of his help to Cooke during the research process." Back to Chelmsford, in 2002 in the midst of the mid-summer heat, Barbara Lowry, a director of Cooke Optics Limited in Leicester, England, and Mark Gerchman, Academy Award¨-winning chief optical designer of Cooke, sat with Paul and Bashia Wilson and his mother, Joyce Wilson, on their backyard deck. Between them on the table was the very first Cooke Portrait PS945 lens produced, serial number 0000. Above them, the sky was beginning to darken in the west to a dramatic gray-green as the group sat for a photo to document the historic occasion. Mr. Wilson accepted the new Cooke lens as a gift from Cooke in appreciation of his support and generosity. "This is the first Cooke lens designed for large format photography in about five decades," commented Lowry. "With PaulÕs help, Cooke has been able to provide the modern photographer with the means of achieving a very special soft focus look that could have ended up lost to history as the quality and availability of vintage lenses diminish." Mr. Wilson said, "The new lens is beautifully made. ItÕs gratifying to know that my great grandfatherÕs work is appreciated enough that a company like Cooke would want to reproduce it. ItÕs been a great experience working with Cooke through this process." It was only mid-afternoon when the sky darkened to blue dusk. The party escaped the deck and moved into the kitchen while cradling four or five different Pinkham & Smith lenses and the box holding the new Cooke lens. Mr. Wilson, a web designer and amateur photographer, chatted with Mark Gerchman at the kitchen counter about what makes the Pinkham & Smith lenses so special while the wind began gusting outside: Pinkham & Smith lenses achieve their distinctive soft focus effect in a manner different from other lenses: using the traditional glass available at the time, Pinkham & Smith hand-corrected multiple surfaces of their lenses. The resulting higher-order spherical aberration achieves very high resolution and a self-luminescent quality when the lens is used wide open at f/4.5. The lens performs like the original Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality lens; that is, it has the aperture-controlled graduated soft focus effect from f/4.5 to f/8, and then performs like a conventional sharp lens from f/11 through f/90. Meanwhile, the wind and the rain swept through carrying old leaves and debris across the open backyard while the descendents and representatives of two historic lens-making companies discussed optics and the passing on of one lens design to another. The wind died down, the air was clean and the sun shined through clearly when everyone parted company. The Cooke Portrait PS945, 229mm lens is available beginning Fall 2002. The manufacturer's suggested list price is US$2,995. The price includes the lens, hinged black lacquered storage box suitable for storing the lens mounted on a lens board up to five inches square, a CD containing the booklet, "How to Use a Soft-focus Lens, Featuring the Cooke Portrait PS945," by Jay Allen, as well as sample photos, historic and technical information. For sales inquires, contact the following dealers: Robert White Camera Specialists, Dorset, United Kingdom at +44 (0)1202 723046, Badger Graphic Sales, Kaukauna, Wisconsin, USA at +1-920-766-9332, The View Camera Store, Fountain Hills, Arizona, USA at +1-480-767-7105, or Clive Russ, Brookline, Massachustts, +1-617-462-1920 or the manufacturer: Cooke Optics Limited, sales@cookeoptics.com, or +44-(0)-116-264-0700, One Cooke Close, Thurmaston, LE4 8PT, Leicester, United Kingdom. Cooke Optics Limited, headquartered in Leicester, England, is a precision optics company with a hundred-year legacy of quality and exacting tolerances carried over from the Taylor, Taylor & Hobson tradition. In addition to making large format photographic lenses, Cooke Optics makes 35mm prime and zoom lenses for feature film production. Cooke S4 Prime lenses, acclaimed for their unique mechanical design and extraordinary photographic qualities, were used to shoot the recent Academy Award winning film, A Beautiful Mind, among many others. To learn more about Cooke Optics and Cooke history, visit the website at www.cookeoptics.com.

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Last Updated: Thursday, December 5, 2002