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Lot Essay
The Cooke Triple Convertible lens was originally made from 1935 until circa 1947. It was based on the original design by Taylor, Taylor & Hobson's renowned lens designer H. W. Lee in 1931 and was the subject of British patent number 376,044.
The Cooke Convertible lens was used to greatest effect by Ansel Adams to capture many of his classic images during his peak picture-taking years in the 1940s and 1950s including: Aspens, northern New Mexico, 1958; Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, 1940; and Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.
Cooke, formerly a division of Taylor-Hobson, became a stand-alone company in 1998 as Cooke Optics Limited. The new company moved to a purpose-built facility in Leicester, three miles from where Cooke lenses for large format photography were originally designed and virtually handcrafted from 1894 to the 1950s. During the 1960s the company changed direction and devoted the second half of the twentieth century to developing television and motion picture film lenses.
Today Cooke Optics Ltd's main business remains the designing and making of motion picture lenses where it has earned an unrivalled reputation for the quality of it's lenses which are used across the industry. It employs around sixty people.
The company has recognised that large format lenses for still photography is a niche market that compliments its existing business. In 2002 it entered the market for large format lenses when it re-introduced the classic Pinkham and Smith soft focus portrait lens which met with critical acclaim. The first production lens from that new production run was sold at Christie's on 16 July 2002. The success of that lens led to requests for other classic Cooke lenses to be updated and remade for modern use.
Following feedback from photographers such as Gordon Hutchings the Cooke designers incorporated some new features to the classic Cooke Series XVa design: the ability to combine two XVa lenses for five possible focal length combinations and a dialable Dynamic Scale Ring for a Copal no. 3 shutter engraved with each of the possible f-stop scales. The optics remain true to the original characteristics of the lens with warm-toned colours, the image is sharp but velvety and renders true flesh tones without filtration and through classic Cooke multicoating there is no flare or ghosting.
Around fifty examples of the 10 x 8 inch format lens are to be produced. If the demand exists Cooke may make a 5 x 4 inch version of the XVa and an updated version of the Cooke Series VIIb wide angle lens.
This is the first lens of the new production run.
Christie's would like to thank Barbara Lowry for her assistance with this catalogue entry.
The Cooke Convertible lens was used to greatest effect by Ansel Adams to capture many of his classic images during his peak picture-taking years in the 1940s and 1950s including: Aspens, northern New Mexico, 1958; Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, 1940; and Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.
Cooke, formerly a division of Taylor-Hobson, became a stand-alone company in 1998 as Cooke Optics Limited. The new company moved to a purpose-built facility in Leicester, three miles from where Cooke lenses for large format photography were originally designed and virtually handcrafted from 1894 to the 1950s. During the 1960s the company changed direction and devoted the second half of the twentieth century to developing television and motion picture film lenses.
Today Cooke Optics Ltd's main business remains the designing and making of motion picture lenses where it has earned an unrivalled reputation for the quality of it's lenses which are used across the industry. It employs around sixty people.
The company has recognised that large format lenses for still photography is a niche market that compliments its existing business. In 2002 it entered the market for large format lenses when it re-introduced the classic Pinkham and Smith soft focus portrait lens which met with critical acclaim. The first production lens from that new production run was sold at Christie's on 16 July 2002. The success of that lens led to requests for other classic Cooke lenses to be updated and remade for modern use.
Following feedback from photographers such as Gordon Hutchings the Cooke designers incorporated some new features to the classic Cooke Series XVa design: the ability to combine two XVa lenses for five possible focal length combinations and a dialable Dynamic Scale Ring for a Copal no. 3 shutter engraved with each of the possible f-stop scales. The optics remain true to the original characteristics of the lens with warm-toned colours, the image is sharp but velvety and renders true flesh tones without filtration and through classic Cooke multicoating there is no flare or ghosting.
Around fifty examples of the 10 x 8 inch format lens are to be produced. If the demand exists Cooke may make a 5 x 4 inch version of the XVa and an updated version of the Cooke Series VIIb wide angle lens.
This is the first lens of the new production run.
Christie's would like to thank Barbara Lowry for her assistance with this catalogue entry.