If you ever complained about precision camera lenses costing thousands of dollars, you’ll have to eat your words after watching this video showing the incredible skills and effort that goes into its manufacturing. With a slightly misleading title, it is probably the farthest thing from a DIY project as it the video shows meticulous attention to details and an extremely broad level of skill set required to create a camera lens.
The camera maker Mats Wernersson has compressed probably weeks of hard work in an incredible four-minute video where he designs and manufactures every single part, from the glass lens to the engraved metal frame and the shutter mechanism, from scratch.
A fascinating set of processes are employed that starts from finding the right focal length for the lens and then go from grinding, lathe turning, water jet cutting to knurling and engraving the model name, etc. on the metallic frame! Although Wernersson’s lens is relatively simple when compared with the electronic-laden glass in use today, the results shown at the end of the video or no less astounding!