Or how I crafted a super fast camera lens from bits and parts... fun! As a photographer, I've had many photographer friends in my life, amongst which fast lenses were often a highly sought after item. The price of such lenses - for example the Leica Noctilux - is usually a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a camera lens, ranging sometimes up to 15,000$. Some of my photographer friends would save up for long periods of time before they could finally buy one, others would simply give up on the idea, bitter or saddened by the unattainable perfection of their dream lens. Among filmmakers and cinematographers, the sequence in Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon", which was lit only by the light of candles and shot using a very fast lens that Kubrick had the Nasa make for him, is also the stuff of dreams. After doing some research, I found that, there were lots of lenses that were built by various manufacturers and for various purposes throughout the history of optical le...