Popular YouTube channel 'How to Make Everything' has published a new video showing the creation of a camera lens from scratch. The project didn't start with pre-made components, as many DIY projects do, but rather with the purely raw materials, including sand and rocks for the eventual lens glass and copper housing.
The new project follows one involving the creation of a pinhole camera from scratch that the channel published in September 2018. This time around, the channel's Andy George spends nearly half an hour walking viewers through the lens creation process, including many failed attempts.
Producing clear glass presented one of the project's most time-consuming challenges, though casting the copper lens housing introduced its own difficulties. After weeks of work, however, the end result was a decently clear, though sadly ill-fated, camera lens with zoom functionality.
I wonder if it would have been easier/better to make copper sheet metal and then shape it to a cylinder rather than casting it. It certainly would have been lighter.
Everyone knows that, the video does not suggest that you abandon manufacture-made lenses and go make your own ... it just shows you a processes of making one, why this is hard to understand?
@mnml98, this video teaches nothing because this guy knows nothing. In a fictional post apocalyptic scenario I would hope smarter people with real skills or at least the concepts of, for example, annealing glass would survive to restart the civilization. LOL
@photomedium So what? i said "showing a process" not "the only process" or correct process, i didn't say the video is educational or useful, and yes, they guy knows nothing, that's the whole point of his channel, as he said in the intro video, he is trying to learn ... while making everything.
I was SOOOO disappointed he just showes us how the image looks from a crappy self-made film camera. Put that thing in front of a mirrorless camera let us see the freaking image!!
What are you talking about? I did watch it long enough to draw my conclusions. There are excellent channels that are absolutely amazing and other clickbait channels. This one was the latter.
How is this click bait. Click bait articles don't deliver what their headline promise. That's why it's called click bait. The heading is making a camera lens from scratch...He literally did this. This included making glass from sand or remelting glass he previously made from sand. (He has a seperate episode on how to make glass in more detail). He ground down three lens elements himself. He smelting copper from copper ore to cast the body of the lens (the details of doing this is also in another episode). So where's the click bait.
Holy sh*t! Please God, not another boy-wonder with a god complex and a penchant for nuclear fission! Shove this guy through a stargate to the Orion galaxy or something.
It's a 50/50 at this point that we can even get past Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
I've never seen such a mix of modern v. "hand made" stuff. Do you know how many hours went into the design and manufacture of the propane torch used for thermal treatment of the glass, or even how many hours go into the production of the PROPANE to run it? Or the backup of the grid to power everything he used?
Why? Just.....why?
We stand in the shoulders of giants. AND, we cannot shrug them off!
Why not? one person in a youtube channel named "How to Make Everything", it's really simple, i'm baffled by comments like yours, people make stuff for fun and profit, sometimes to learn and have fun, there isn't anything more to it than that.
"If society goes haywire like The Walking Dead, will it take another 1.8 million years (or few hundred thousand, or six thousand years...depending on your perspective of how long man has been around) before we can get back to the moon?"
Another rise of civilization comparable to current times will NOT happen on this planet because all of the easily obtainable resources and mineral deposits have been used. Certainly not within anything less than a geological timeframe.
Look at what it takes to get oil out of the ground, large scale mining for minerals. Even making glass on an industrial scale.
This is it folks, we have one shot as a species to make it.
Well he has a shop and the glass lens looks good. But I wonder about his craftsmanship level after looking at the "woodworking" he did on that view camera. I put more refinement into birdhouses that I make out of scraps.
while i admire this fellows stick-to-it-ive-ness and determination , i have to say , after the Apocalypse i hope to see anyone but him trying to recover photography for surviving humanity
What the video doesn't go into is the source of the knowledge needed to construct the lens, or any other item of manufacture, for that matter. That's where the patent system comes in. If you want to learn how to make literally anything, search the patent database and you will find your answer. Of course, YouTube provides all the shortcuts....
If you even look at the patent registry, you are heavily responsible for breaking the IP rights if you are found guilty in court. But, if you can proof that you have no idea of at all about the patents, then you are not purposely trying to use others work and even if are found guilty then you are not purposely doing it and fines are smaller.
That is just the case that you can't go even look that are you using others IP.
I think he's referring to expired patents, of which there are over two hundred years worth. Besides, any process worth patenting in the last twenty years is probably far too complex and specialized for a DIY project anyway.
If those patents are anywhere near a existing and valid patents, then you are likely in trouble as you went to search for them.
If you can proof that you have not seen anything from anyone else, not by even by accident, then you are not purposely trying to use others patented work.
That is the reason why almost all patents are public (some are secret) so citizens can go and search the solution to your problem and license the solution from the person who solved it.
But it doesn't really go so easily. As people get greedy that they want silly licensing money or rights to your products etc. Why the patent systems are totally broken as they do not anymore serve what the idea was all about.
Of course you are correct that the patent system is broken. However, my point is that any patent that contains information that could be useful for making a homemade lens has probably expired a long, long time ago. Patents are only valid for 20 years, so any patent granted before 1999 is now expired. Besides, any lens patent that is still valid is probably useless to a home lens maker since the replicating it would require incredibly expensive industrial equipment.
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