Here’s an interesting video that walks through how the highly regarded — and fully manual — Voigtlander Nokton 25mm f/0.95 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras is made at the Cosina plant in Nagano, Japan (jump to 2:30 to skip the intro). It’s interesting how each of the 10 aperture blades must be carefully set in the lens using tweezers.

(via Foto Actualidad)

If you’ve ever browsed the t-shirts at Threadless, you know that the company features photography very prominently on their website. Each shirt page shows off not only the design, but a unique photo of a guy and a gal wearing that design — often in a location that reflects the artwork. Grover Sanschagrin of PhotoShelter recently paid a visit to Threadless and made this interesting behind-the-scenes video of how the photo department (AKA Sean Dorgan) there operates.

Photographer Joey Celis needed to shoot a photograph of eleven people in a dimly lit cigar lounge, but found it difficult to light the models without having lighting gear appear in the shot. In the end, he was able to make the image above with a single Speedlite.
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Nikon created this beautiful video promoting Nikkor lenses, and included interesting looks into how their lenses are manufactured. Previously we shared a post showing how Canon manufactures their 500mm lens.

(via Nikon Rumors)

Magnum street photographer Bruce Gilden shoots his candid portraits on sidewalks by walking right up to strangers and sticking his camera and flash up into their faces, as seen in the “walking NYC streets” video we featured last year. In the behind-the-scenes video above, British Journal of Photography editor Olivier Laurent follows Gilden around as he shoots a project in Derby, England.

(via Photoxels)

Photo editor John G. Morris is a legendary photo editor who played a huge role in how we perceived major world events in the 20th century. Here’s an interesting behind-the-scenes look at his role in shaping history.

Here’s a rare behind-the-scenes look into Ansel Adams’ home in Carmel, California and the custom built darkroom in which most of Adams’ famous prints were created. It’s pretty amazing how much editing Adams’ did in transforming the plain negatives into the beautiful works of art hanging on walls around the world.

The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.

– Ansel Adams

Michael Adams, Ansel’s son and the “tour guide” in this video, also shares some of Ansel’s tools, techniques, and tricks.

(via f stoppers)

This Science Channel “How Its Made” segment shows the manufacturing process for CCD semiconductors, which are the sensors found in many digital cameras. For the difference between CCD and CMOS, check out this How Stuff Works article.

Every time you launch Photoshop, you’re greeted momentarily with a splash screen showing a cloud of names that give credit to the people who have worked on the program. This “Behind the Splash Screen” video introduces you to some of the people whose names are found there, and provides some background on how Photoshop CS5 was developed (as well as the huge challenges they faced).
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We’ve already featured a video showing what life is like as President Obama’s official photographer, and now here’s an interesting behind-the-scenes video that gives us a look into shooting on Capitol Hill.

(via The Click)