Resolution
Most people equate Cooke lenses with an indelible softness in the image it produces. In actuality, Cooke’s are some of the sharpest cinema lenses being produced today, able to distinguish up to 200 line pairs per millimeter.
When testing a lens’ sharpness, you test to see how many line pairs it’s able to resolve, or how many black and white separate lines on a TV screen it is able to define. For a lens to be rated for a 4K camera, it must be able to resolve at least up to 40 line pairs per mm. Cooke’s, at a 200 line pair benchmark, could be used for systems shooting up to 20K.
“We really pushed these lenses. They are mechanically superb but the sharpness was the best thing. They’re pin sharp when you need it but have a wonderful fall off to creamy softness in the out of focus regions.”
Josh McKie, Cinematographer, Documentary short and TV spot for The Global Fund