Making a Camera Lens from Scratch Using Rocks, Sand, and Copper
Can an ordinary person made a camera lens from scratch? Here’s a 22-minute video in which Andy George of How To Make Everything answers that question by producing clear glass and metal and combining them to create a camera lens.
“It has been one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever done,” George says after completing his lens. “Every single step in the project has been a huge pain.”
Making clear glass took over a dozen tries, annealing the glass pucks took at least four attempts, and grinding the lenses themselves took at least 30 hours of continuous grinding.
What resulted after the ridiculous amount of work was a working camera lens that projects a cloudy image onto ground glass.
It’s definitely not a perfect or very usable lens, but it’s impressive that it’s a lens that was manufactured by a single person.
(via How to Make Everything via Fstoppers)
P.S. George recently also made a pinhole camera from scratch in this 19-minute video.
Image credits: Video and still frames by How to Make Everything
