Bausch & Lomb

Bausch & Lomb was founded in 1853 in Rochester, New York by John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb as an optical workshop. The company spent most of its history in eyewear and ophthalmic optics; the cinema-relevant chapter is the Super Baltar prime lens series produced from the 1930s through the 1950s.

The Baltar primes were the standard production lenses on Hollywood film cameras during the studio-system era and saw a second life in the 2000s when several rental houses commissioned PL-mount rehouses. Films including The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter were shot on Baltar glass; the rehoused versions appear occasionally on contemporary period films.