howitsmade

Musician and YouTuber Tucker Tota has released a nearly one-hour-long video where he breaks down Bo Burnham's comedy special "Inside" and offers his thoughts on how he believes it was produced.

UK-based film and photo paper manufacturer ILFORD Photo has released a new short film titled "Behind the Film" that takes you inside the HARMAN technology factory in the village of Mobberley, England, where all of the ILFORD and Kentmere B&W film, photographic paper and chemicals are made.

Johnnie Behiri of cinema5D recently visited the Cartoni tripod factory in Rome, Italy. The 11.5-minute video above is a behind-the-scenes look at how the famous tripods are made by a small team at the family company.

Want to see how RED makes its popular digital cameras that carry price tags of tens of thousands of dollars? The company released this 3-minute video that offers a behind-the-scenes look at its manufacturing and production facilities.

Pelican brand hard cases are a popular choice for photographers who need to safely transport camera and lighting gear from photo shoot to photo shoot. BrandmadeTV made the 6.5-minute video above that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how these durable hard cases are manufactured.

If you ever see an ultra-slow-motion clip online, there's a good chance that it was shot using a Phantom high-speed camera. The 12-minute video above is a behind-the-scenes look at how the cameras -- which cost upwards of $150,000 -- are made.

Back in the heyday of film photography, a common part of the photography experience was dropping off your film rolls at a store or lab, placing the roll in an envelope and checking boxes with instructions for what you'd like. Here's a fascinating 5-minute video that reveals what happened to your film between drop off and delivery of your prints and processed film.

Here's a recent episode from the Science Channel's show How It's Made that shows how modern camera tripods are manufactured. We get a tour of a Manfrotto tripod factory, starting from when aluminum tubes are sliced to specific lengths by precise machines and up through when tubes are joined through custom housings by hand.

Founded in Manhattan in 1853, Steinway & Sons is widely considered to be one of the greatest piano makers in the world. Its grand pianos grace the world's grandest stages and are played by the best pianists.

Architectural photographer Chris Payne visited the company's factory at One Steinway Place in Astoria, New York, and created beautiful photos that document how raw materials are turned into some of the world's finest musical instruments. His project is titled "Making Steinway: An American Workplace."

Photographer Dieter Schneider recently built a 4x5 large format camera for wet plate photography out of plywood using his Shapeoko 3 desktop CNC machine. Luckily for all of us, he also documented the entire process on camera.

What's the largest print you've ever made in a darkroom? If you've never done anything larger than the most common sizes, then you may find the video above illuminating.

Over the course of 3 minutes, we get to see how Norwegian photo assistant Oystein Gronvold recently went about creating a massive 120x150cm (~4x5ft) silver print from an 8x10 negative for photographer Dag Alveng.

Want an inside look at how The Impossible Project makes its instant film? The folks over at Highsnobiety recently paid a visit to the company's factory in Enschede, which it purchased from Polaroid and rebooted. The 3-minute video above shows various steps of the instant film creation process, from development, to assembly, to boxing it up for shipping.

Back in June, Lomography raised nearly $1 million on Kickstarter to launch its new Petzval 58 Bokeh Control lens. It's a lens that takes a classic design and adds a new twist: a bokeh control ring for adjusting the look of out-of-focus areas in your shots.

Today we have some exclusive behind-the-scenes photos of how Lomography's Petzval lenses are manufactured by the skilled optical technicians at the Zenit factory in Russia.

What happens to used disposable cameras once the film has been processed and printed for customers? Well, oftentimes the camera company is able to get its hands on the discarded shell, load it up, and sell it to customers again. If you want to see exactly how this recycling process is/was done, check out the fascinating 15-minute video above, which shows how Fujifilm recycled and reused disposable cameras back in 1998.

Want to see how Nikon SLR cameras were made two decades ago? Back in 1998, the Japanese TV show "The Making" -- an international predecessor of How It's Made -- aired this 15-minute-long segment showing how Nikon manufactured its F70 film SLR (known as the N70 in the US), which was first introduced in 1994.

Fujifilm just published this 3-minute-long behind-the-scenes video that offers a glimpse into the manufacturing process for the X-T10 mirrorless camera, which we reviewed recently.

If you’re a fan of both photography and the TV show How It’s Made, here’s a behind-the-scenes video that …

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how Japanese lens maker Kowa creates its Prominar line of lenses for Micro Four Thirds cameras. The 3-minute "how it's made" video above steps through each of the stages of manufacturing, from designing the lenses on a computer to putting the components together into a final product and testing its optical qualities.

Since 2013, Sigma has been releasing an annual short film that shows how its highly regarded lenses are manufactured in the company's only factory located in Aizu, Japan. The company just released the third video in the series, which documents the daily life of the customer support department in the factory that services equipment for Sigma shooters.

In 2013, we reported that the Italian film company Ferrania was planning to reboot its production of analog film. The next year, the company launched a Kickstarter campaign and ended up raising over $300,000 to bring film back.

Now that the company is working to restart operations, it has been posting regular progress updates on its website. The most recent "dispatch" shows how the company is cleaning a precision film coating machine to prepare for production.

There's something to be said about lens manufacturing. You could even go so far as to say it, in itself, is an art form, with the hands of skilled and methodical workers ever-so-delicately assembling the glass we use to take photos.

Speaking of lens manufacturing, Carl Zeiss Lenses has just posted an short, yet interesting, video behind the manufacturing process of their Touit lens line (for what it's worth, the video is also available in 3D, if you need an added dimension to your viewing experience). These lenses come as 12mm f/2.8 or 32mm f/1.8, and are available for both E-mount and X-mount cameras starting in June.

Here’s a wonderfully soothing look at how the ink that brings many of our photos from digital to physical …

On January 28, Nikon announced the 80th anniversary of the launch of the Nikkor lens brand, and that the total number of lenses manufactured since the beginning has exceeded 75 million units. The lineup now includes more than 80 types of lenses.

To celebrate the occasion, Nikon released the above video, which offers a behind-the-scenes look into how its widely used lenses are made. The video starts from the production of the glass from sand and goes through final assembly, all in three-and-a-half minutes.

Want to see how the highly-acclaimed Sony RX1 is assembled? At CES 2013 in Las Vegas last week, Sony showed the above video at its special press event, using it as a creative countdown clock for indicating when the show would begin. The split-screen video shows three of Sony's newer products -- the Cybershot RX1 camera, the Xperia Z smartphone, and an HD camcorder -- being assembled from their basic parts.

Nikon recently put out this short 3-minute video that offers an interesting glimpse into one of the critical steps of lens making: the production of the optical glass. It steps through the various stages of manufacturing, from combining the raw elements through examining the chunks of glass before they're polished and perfected.

Back in March, a client for whom I’ve done some light consulting work asked me if it was possible to capture a 360-degree-image that can be rotated afterwards. I said of course, but didn’t think that much about the consequences -- it's a project that would wake me up at nights for the next few months.