The Tiffen Company

The Tiffen Company was founded in 1938 in Brooklyn, New York by Nat Tiffen as an optical-coating workshop. The company has stayed family-owned and now operates from Hauppauge, Long Island; the manufacturing process for cinema-grade filters has been kept entirely in-house, including the laminating, polishing, and ColorCore deposition steps that distinguish a Tiffen filter from off-the-shelf glass.

Tiffen produces almost every category of in-front-of-lens filter — neutral density, IRND, polarisers, the Black Pro-Mist and Glimmer Glass diffusion ranges, the soft-effect family (Soft FX, Smoque, Black Frost), and graduated NDs. The Black Pro-Mist range in particular is the de-facto reference for skin-tone-friendly diffusion in modern cinema.

Tiffen also owns Steadicam (the camera-stabilisation gimbal brand) and the Lowel-Light fixture line. The company supplies almost every major rental house with consumable filter inventory.