Cooke has unveiled the S4 FF/i: six full-frame primes that take the recipe of the Super 35 S4/i, a set that has been on half of Europe’s film sets for twenty years, and stretch it to cover the large sensor. The product page is already live on the official Cooke website, and Newsshooter covered the launch on 20 October. For anyone shooting on Venice, ALEXA LF or V-Raptor it’s one of the more anticipated releases of the year, and in our view it makes sense for smaller camera packages too.

Six focal lengths and the numbers

The range covers 18, 25, 35, 50, 75 and 100 mm, all at T2 (closing to T16), in PL or LPL, with a common 87 mm front diameter, 270° focus rotation and 75° iris rotation. Matching rings and fronts across the set mean lens changes without re-rigging the follow focus or the matte box.

  • 18 mm: 1.8 kg, 30 cm close focus, 102° field of view on full frame
  • 25 mm: 1.65 kg, 28 cm close focus
  • 35 mm: 1.7 kg, 28 cm close focus
  • 50 mm: 1.45 kg, 35 cm close focus, the lightest of the set
  • 75 mm: 1.6 kg, 45 cm close focus
  • 100 mm: 1.65 kg, 65 cm close focus

The iris moves from eight straight blades (on the Super 35 S4/i) to nine slightly curved blades, so out-of-focus highlights stay round when you stop down a couple of stops, exactly where the old S4s started showing corners. Veiling flare takes on the colour of the source, and according to those who’ve seen them each focal length behaves a little differently. They’re hand-built in Leicester.

/i Technology: the data post needs

Through the mount contacts (or a cable connector) the lenses send focus, iris and inertial motion data in real time, plus a shading and distortion map calibrated at the factory for each individual lens. For VFX and virtual production that’s one less job on the day: no grid charts at wrap to rebuild distortion later.

The price, and why these get rented

Newsshooter reports €13,000 per lens (£11,000); Cooke doesn’t list a price on its page and points to dealers and rental houses instead. That puts a full set at roughly €78,000 before VAT and accessories. In Italy, and even more so in Abruzzo, no mid-size production buys these for one feature or three commercials a year: they are rental-house lenses, and Cooke’s own page points straight to rental houses.

On set the reasoning goes like this: the S4 is the classic “Cooke Look”, soft on skin without losing sharpness, and until now anyone who wanted it on full frame had to move to the S7/i or S8/i. The S4 FF/i brings that rendering to a large sensor at T2. Our one piece of advice as a rental house: test them before you lock them in, because at the same focal length the full-frame field of view changes how a face separates from the background.

What we’d pair them with

They cover full frame but work on Super 35 as well. On a Sony BURANO with a PL adapter they use the whole sensor; on an ARRI ALEXA Mini you’re in Super 35 using the centre of the image, and the 18 becomes a regular wide. For a light second camera the RED KOMODO 6K with an adapter makes sense. The rest of our cameras, lenses and accessories are under equipment.

If you’re prepping a project that calls for this kind of look, give us a call: we’ll tell you what we have in house, what we can source and what a week on set really costs.