Lenses

The Hallmark Movies & Mysteries modern day TV western JL Ranch spent this past winter shooting on location in Kentucky presenting director Charles Robert Carner and DP Kris Kimlin with an array of often-unexpected challenges. Facing snow, rain, mud, and temperatures ranging from -11°F to +50°F Kimlin relied heavily on his Cooke S4/i lens package consisting of 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm, and 100mm focal lengths on an Alexa digital camera. “We didn’t expect the elements, so we had to embrace them,” said Kimlin.

Cooke Optics has introduced its second front Anamorphic/i zoom lens, the 45-405mm zoom. In addition, the 35-140mm Anamorphic/i wide angle zoom is expected to start shipping over the summer. The 45-405mm T4.5-22, front Anamorphic/i zoom lens has preliminary specifications featuring 9x zoom front anamorphic, 5’10” MOD from image plane and 3’11” close focus from the front of the lens. True to Cooke style, the color and contrast will match the rest of the series.

When director of photography Julián Apezteguia, ADF (La Asociación de Autores de Fotografía Cinematográfica Argentina — Argentinian Society of Cinematographers) got the chance to work with director Pablo Trapero for the second time, on the director's latest film El Clan — a dark story set in the 1980's about a family of kidnappers and murderers — they used a full range of Cooke Anamorphic/i lenses to give the film a “strong optical personality.”

Cinematographer Adam Stone and director Jeff Nichols have been close collaborators since film school and share the same sensibilities, particularly with their preference for the anamorphic format. “Not knowing any better, we shot our first low-budget indie, Shotgun Stories (2007), in widescreen,” Stone said. “That film did better than expected, and we attributed some of its success to the format—widescreen added a weight and elegant stateliness to the story.”