38 TVBEurope
The advantage of the CORIO®
CORIO® master … a new level of video
processing for Videowall applications, utilize irregular combinations of monitors, independent resolutions, image rotation & scaled outputs
® 3 processing
www.tvbeurope.com February 2013 The Business Case master … the fl exibility to be different. A lensworthy of Merit
Jake Young talks to Cooke Optics Chairman Les Zellan and CEO Robert Howard about winning a 2013 Academy Award of Merit and how this lens company has managed to stay at the top of its game for over a century
“WE FULLYrecognise this is in effect a lifetime achievement award for Cooke,” says Robert Howard, CEO of Cooke Optics, speaking about the lens manufacturer’s Academy Award of Merit during a tour of the company’s Leicester, UK factory. “It’s recognising the fact that Cooke has been a major element in the developments that have happened in motion picture production from the start.” As Howard indicates, Cooke has been around for 120 years, and the company’s recognition by the Academy – announced last month – has been overwhelming. Chairman Les Zellan says, “it isn’t lost on
me that we’re actually standing on the shoulders of the brilliant engineers, designers and artisans that not only are here now but have come before us. I have no illusion that we’re only successful because of the long history of innovation at the company. This award is a recognition of the role Cooke has played – and continues to play – in the evolution of the motion picture business.”
The Cooke Look Things haven’t always been easy for the company. The Cooke lens division became independent in 1998, when Howard – having worked as a venture capitalist – got involved in a management buy-in of Taylor Hobson, the company making Cooke lenses. At that time Cooke was losing money. Zoom lenses had converted its product line and the company had lost the market that it had in television. The S4/i range had just been developed but
it hadn’t been launched, and Howard was told to close Cooke. He refused, saying the company was worth something because it had this new range of true T2 prime lenses. “Without investment the business dies,”
anything else on the market. “Since then we’ve launched both the 5/is and the miniS4/is [originally named Panchro/i by Cooke] – so you’ve now got a range of 2.8 lenses [miniS4/i], T2 lenses [S4/i] and then T 1.4 lenses [5/i] – and obviously we’ve also added new focal lengths in those ranges.”
The ‘Cooke Look’, “our Coca-Cola
secret” according to Zellan, may also have kept the company in existence. “We have had that underlying philosophy since the Speed Panchros [a cine prime lens that chromatically enhanced an image when filming under restricted illumination],” says Zellan. “It’s a warm look so it makes people look good generally, and it tends to be a very dimensional falloff of focus.”
Digital expansion Year on year growth in last year’s financial accounts was just over 25%. On the subject of this growth spurt, Howard says it’s all about production, and that glass was the big bottleneck. “In the last three years we’ve increased output by approximately 50%,” he reveals. “When I joined we only worked one shift
on glass, and therefore that limited the amount of lenses we were producing in assembly.” According to Zellan, the demand
“We have no stock. Everything we make is sold and it’s been that way since 1998. On some of our lines we’re sold out into 2014”
The Video Processing Specialists
TV One Europe, Arcadia House, 15 Forlease Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 1RX, UK Tel: +44 (0)1628 566820 Fax +44 (0)1628 566821
sales.europe@
tvone.com
www.tvone.eu E&OE. All Copyrights and Trademarks are acknowledged
states Howard. “You have to keep coming up with new products in order to keep everything alive and moving forward.” Howard sold Cooke to Zellan (who had been selling the company’s lenses as a US distributor), and a decade later, in August 2008, Zellan invited Howard to the management team as CEO. The company has since flourished, but it
Call now for a our latest
Catalog & Brochure or visit our website for more information
was the S4/is that kept Cooke alive and growing. “When I joined we only had the range of S4/is,” says Howard. “We were known at the time for zooms and we came out with a set of primes that were ergonomically totally different to
Les Zellan
because of the expansion of the industry due to the digital camera has been phenomenal. “We have no stock,” he says. “Everything we make is sold and it’s been that way since 1998. On some of our lines we’re sold out into 2014.” Cooke has been built from 36 people in 1998 to roughly 85 people today, and the company is looking to hire more. “I told everybody at the company when I took control that my intention was to hand it off to the next generation better than I found it so we could live for another 120 years,” says Zellan. “So far we’re on track.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56