COOKE SPEED PANCHRO Coverage Test on a Canon R5

So we’re just looking at the amount of coverage that vintage Cooke Speed Panchro lenses have when shooting full frame on a Canon R5. And also the flaring characteristics on uncoated lenses. I’m using my hand just to stop the sun hitting the lens directly. As we can see the 50mm has full coverage even on full frame. There’s that awesome barrelling affect you get on the panchros. All these lense are shot wide open to maximise the vignetting on the lenses as well.

So as soon as we step down to the 32mm we already have coverage issues. Definitely unusable without cropping at this focal length. We are also shooting with a Hoya Pro 64 ND on all these lenses except for the 18mm.

On the 25mm we have pretty much the same coverage as the 32mm lens. You have to scale about 15% to crop in and get rid of the edges. And I didn’t stop the flares for this shot and you can see just how destructive the light is if you let it hit your lens without a mattebox.

On the 18mm we have to scale in about 20% to get rid of the edges. So it really is not useable without significant crop.

So when we swap over to the 1.6x Crop mode on the R5, we already have full coverage on the 18mm lens. So these lenses work perfectly fine on a Super35 sensor. There is a significant crop involved on all of the lenses, but this is the same as shooting on an Alexa with a Super35 sensor.

Personally I like to just use the 50mm on full frame cameras with the panchros, because I do like the extra depth of field you get on a bigger sensor.

From other tests I’ve seen the 40mm Panchro is the widest available that covers the full frame sensors.

Now enough testing and let’s shoot!