Baltar BOOK (by Baush & Lomb)

[Ilya O.]

The original Baltars of Bausch and Lomb lineup was 25-28-32-40-50-75-100-152 (f-stop varied 1:2.3 to 1:2.7).

It was made to compete with COOKE's first Panchros, but actually never succeeded (That means they had more focus falloff which is nice for portraiture).

They decided to take a revenge and at 1963 B&L presented Super Baltars (20-25-35-50-75-100 mm all f2.0)

Here you are Super Baltar BOOK (with text layer):
NEW SUPER BALTAR PROFESSIONAL MOTION PICTURE CAMERA LENSES.pdf
https://goo.gl/8Cvx6W

Title page:



Enough of the marketing adverts, let's put some heavy soviet testing of Baltars!
Here is NIKFI Catalogue of Baltars and Supers:

Baltar & Super Baltar BOOK by NIKFI - a part of NIKFI Catalog of 1969 (with text layer).pdf


Page sampe:


Lenses tested:

1. Baltar 75mm f/2.3
2. Baltar 100mm f/2.3
3. Super Baltar 20mm f/2
4. Super Baltar 25mm f/2
5. Super Baltar 35mm f/2
6. Super Baltar 50mm f/2
7. Super Baltar 75mm f/2
8. Super Baltar 100mm f/2

It is in Russian, so use this pic as a key:

 

[Ilya O.]

Here is a very nice Super Baltar's review article by Jorge Diaz-Amador of CinemaTechnic:

http://cinematechnic.com/optics/super-baltar

 

[Ilya O.]

UPDATE:

published NIKFI Baltar and Super Baltars Book!

https://goo.gl/bMa1Nz

 

[Adrian Jebef]

This is great old reference material. Thanks Ilya!

 

[Ilya O.]

Adrian, I'm glad you liked it^-)

It would be even more interesting for pure vintage lens lovers to directly compare perfomance of many lenses.
Full NIKFI Catalogue has OKS, RO, Kinoptic Apochromats, Astro-Berlin Tachars, Cooke Panchros, Baltars, Angeniuex primes and zooms, Kowa Cine-Prominars, Zeiss/Opton Super Speeds, Technovision Anamorphics etc...
And the tests were done for all these lenses using the same standarts and methodology!
This is unique, you know, for such a massive of classic glass of the 60-80-s.
Later I will publish it in full.

Still, I feel disappointed cause only 39 (sic!) NIKFI Cooke Book was downloaded since 14 of December, 2016th.
Well, I only hope those who did it are real lens nerds and one of them costs 100 regular users

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

great content as always!!!!!!!

Thanks a TON !

 

[Ilya O.]

Tommaso, thanks!
You may not realise it (and me too, actually) but your short appreciation posts make me happy and forces me to share more and have optimistic attitude to what I do

 

[luigivaltulini]

WOW

Thanks MAN

 

[Ilya O.]

Luigi, hope you use one day

What I see from the grafs Baltars 50-75-100mm have a character of its own:

1. radical sharpness falloff at the edge
2. red chromatic aberrations
3. low contrast but good edge definition (sharpness) in the center of a frame
4. 60-65% vignetting
5. middle-to high light scattering
6. very low astigmatism
7. low spherical aberration
8. near zero distortion
9. not so effective coating which leads to low transmission coefficient (60-66% that means 50mm is T2.8, 75mm T2.9 and 100mm is T3.1)

 

[Michael Lindsay]

Another great thread ...

Thanks Ilya

 

[Dan Kanes]

Very thankful and in awe!

 

[Ignacio Aguilar]

Great info Ilya!

 

[Ilya O.]

thanks, Ignacio;-)

i've looked theough your rental catalogue, you have very nice glass, baltars and cookes ans some vintage zooms;-)
but why no lomo?

 

[Ignacio Aguilar]

I do have some Lomo lenses indeed, but I'm planning to sell them soon and that's why they are not in the catalogue anymore.

 

[Ilya O.]

As for the old first series Baltars 50-75-100mm, one can take a look at the optical plots and lens diagrams of 50, 75 and 100mm in NIKFI Catalogue in .pdf at pages 10-15.

As for other foci, I have info on them, but not as detailed as seen in NIKFI Catalogue.
So there were 25-28-32-40-50-75-100mm at f2.3 and a 152mm f2.7.
It seems they were mainly uncoated since I have 35mm (#8479) and three 50mm-s (# AS8221, # AS8611 R, # AS534) with no coating — they are from the year of 1941 or earlier.
It seems B&L started to do the coating after the WWII. Am I right, guys?

Here is how typical uncoated Baltar of that era look like (a photo of wartime Baltar 50mm f2.3 Bausch & Lomb Opt. Co. Rochester N.Y. USA):

What else? The nice thing is that at least 25-100mm are all of classic Cooke Series 0 (Opic)/"Planar"/Double Gauss design (6 elements in 4 components, pseudo-symmetrical) which gives all the line uniform look and character.

Baltar 35mm f/2.3 has quite satisfactory IQ overall but worse than first Cooke speed Panchros. It has the photographic resolving power of 52 line pairs/mm in the center and 24lp/mm at the edge (=12,5mm from the center of a frame). This resolution was measured on KN black and white Soviet film stock (it can resolve max of 130lp/mm). Baltar 35mm has some noticeable vignetting, the corner relative illumination is 40%.

As for other Baltars, take a glance at this table with all main optical data (f- and t-stop, back focal distance, resolution, relative illumination/vignetting):