Taylor Hobson Cooke Telekinic Anastigmat 6-inch f/4.5 Exakta

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

This is one of those lenses I found in the Adolph Gasser (late, lamented San Francisco camera store) bargain table, about a year ago.

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This is a rather common and well-known cine lens, with several variants it seems, dating back to the 1930's.
It has been seen in various cine mounts, often in C-mount. As per the serial number 198358 (TTH Cooke serial numbers are not too well documented and information may be inconsistent) this one seems to be from after 1926 and pre-1939.

The unusual thing about mine is that it is in a quite professional looking brass and aluminum Exakta focusing mount, with an engraved distance scale and all. The lens head, possibly removed from a cine mount/helical, just screws in to the Exakta focusing mount. I don't know if it is a one-off custom job or a factory conversion. The lens covers full-frame 35mm film just fine, and of course APS-C.

The lens itself seems to be a telephoto of some sort, though I may be mistaken. I have not had to disassemble the lens head, thankfully, but therefore I cannot verify the lens formula. "Telekinic" does not seem to indicate a lens formula as such, and seems to have been used for a variety of cine lenses of varying specification.

The glass is in good shape and seems to have been coated at some point (a blue-ish tinted coating), though its now a bit patchy on the front element. It may be that both lens mount and coating were post-war custom work to adapt it for SLR use. Everything works very well on this. Minimum focus is very long, over 3 meters (10 feet), so I have had to use extension rings extensively.

I have used this both on my Pentax K30, using my homemade Exakta-Pentax adapter (no infinity) and my Nex 3, for which there are excellent Exakta adapters. No bird, unfortunately, as properly that requires extension rings to get a decent closeup even on the Pentax, and I didn't have them on at the time.

Results are very good, though not spectacular, and there are no extreme bokeh effects. Though no doubt Marek would surprise us all with a butterfly picture that will prove me wrong. This is a competent tele lens of modest specification. There is a bit of CA wide open.

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