How the Fuji X-T10 is Made

From Fujifilm. Thanks to Stephen Scharf for sending this along.

Note that the first half of the video concentrates mainly on the top plate—historically one of the most difficult parts of a camera to manufacture and one that can account for a surprisingly high percentage of the overall manufacturing cost. I don't know if that's still the case, but the video indirectly implies that it might be.

Mike

P.S. Here's the link. It's a very retro design—it channels Japanese SLRs of the 1960s.

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TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Krumm: "I like these assembly videos, even though the music in this one made me think I was watching a propaganda film. It would be fun to see a more human side—smoke breaks, union meetings, assembly screw-ups—still waiting for the reality TV show I guess. But I do love watching what we humans are capable of building."

Tuomas: "You really shouldn't have done that, Mike—now I want to get one! And I already have too many cameras...."

Stephen Scharf: "I found this to be a very cool video to watch. Putting my Six Sigma Black Belt hat on for a moment, I find Fuji's manufacturing prowess to be very impressive. A great deal has been done to remove variability in parts manufacturing and assembly operations. As a result, I would wager the scrap rate on top covers is actually quite low, with Fuji using SOTA manufacturing best practices. e.g. lean, precise measurement systems, and poke-yoke to maximize quality and prevent defects. It's reasons like this why I use this company's products; they actually listen to user needs and are passionate about providing maximal quality and value for their customers.

"For those interested, here is a link to a video on the manufacturing of Fuji XF lenses. I find this to be even more impressive than the camera body manufacturing because the tolerances and engineering specification required are even higher."

Bill Tyler: "In his excellent book, Camera Technology, The Dark Side of the Lens, Norman Goldberg stated that the top plate, with the prism hump, was the single most expensive component of a traditional SLR. I highly recommend the book if you're at all interested in how pre-digital cameras functioned. It's not really a photographer's book, but if mechanical stuff fascinates you, it's a great read.

Mike replies: I agree. That book is a minor classic. And it's available for Kindle, which I didn't know before right now.

Jon responds to Bill and Mike: "That Camera Technology book is the kind of thing I love to read! Too bad it is $45 which is beyond what I can pay for books at the moment. Any other great mechanical/technology books to recommend like Camera Technology? They don't have to be camera related, I won't tell!"

Mike replies: Sure, off the top of my head I can recommend Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder, about a technological genius who figured out how to first find, and then retrieve, an inaccessible sunken treasure in deep ocean; Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel, about the race to create the maritime chronograph (there's also an illustrated edition; The Mapmakers by John Noble Wilford (he also wrote a great book about clockmaking); The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough; The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski (you laugh, but I'll just warn you, once you get addicted to Petroski...), and one of my favorite little books about making stuff, the classic The Nature and Art of Workmanship by David Pye. When you finish those, ask again and I'll give you six more.

Peter Croft: "Likewise, I love watching these clips, but how I wish they'd hold the shots and show me more. It's too fast, too soft focus, too hard to see properly. Only about three seconds on the Chemical Conversion Coating. How does that work? I wish....

"I've always loved watching manufacturing machines and wished there was a TV program. Yes, I know about Super Factories or whatever it's called, but they are plagued by cameraman's disease—wave the camera around, whiz pan, out of focus, jerk zoom. And edited at a frantic pace—never leave a shot to screen for longer than one second. And endlessly dip to black between shots. Cliché, cliché. I'm thinking of starting a new career as a cameraman. I could do an even worse job and get paid for it. I wish...."

Bruce Rubenstein: "The top plate of the Fuji is made in a completely different way, out of different metal than a traditional SLR top plate. A typical old school top plate was made from sheet brass and 'drawn' on a press with dies that formed the part. There are several hand finishing steps to complete the part. It was just a protective cover and not a structural part. The Canon AE-1 was, I think, the first SLR to use an engineering plastic molded cover. The Fuji top plate is similar to the AE-1 except for using metal. By using a casting, features can be made for attaching other parts and assemblies. A video of the top plate assembly is sexy, because it's a shiny part with lots of 'touch' labor. The real high precision is in the guts of the camera like making the sensor assembly and the alignment of it to the lens flange."

Comments

[adamct]

That video was pretty amazing. I know they were (quite transparently) trying to send the message that they are Leica-like in their hand-made nature and quality control, but I am still amazed that so many of the steps are manual. Who would have guessed that the ink for the lettering is manually applied? I find that nothing short of astonishing. It's not a good or a bad thing (I have no reason to believe that doing any of this stuff manually is qualitatively better than doing it by machine -- I assume it is just that the volume of production isn't high enough to warrant developing dedicated manufacturing equipment), it's just surprising that such a high-tech tool is put together with such (arguably) low-tech techniques.

Best regards,
Adam

[FK]

Wouldn't this be representative of all modern cameras to a certain extent?

[Steve Smith]

Thanks. I love things like this. I recently watched some film showing manufacturing in the Raleigh bicycle factory in England from the 1940s. The revelation in that one was the way the bottom bracket shell (the bit the pedal crank goes through) starts life as a disc of steel and after a few pressing operations becomes a cylinder.

[JG]

If I ever had any doubt, this video has confirmed it: Working on an assembly line isn't for me! A few days of doing that would end up with me drooling and mumbling to myself, if not certifiably insane.

But as a cameraholic, I'm sure glad there are other people who can and do enjoy this sort of work! 8^)

[Peter Croft]

Likewise, I love watching these clips, but how I wish they'd hold the shots and show me more. It's too fast, too soft focus, too hard to see properly. Only about three seconds on the Chemical Conversion Coating. How does that work? I wish ...

I've always loved watching manufacturing machines and wished there was a TV program. Yes, I know about Super Factories or whatever it's called, but they are plagued by cameraman's disease - wave the camera around, whiz pan, out of focus, jerk zoom. And edited at a frantic pace - never leave a shot to screen for longer than 1 second. And endlessly dip to black between shots. Cliche, cliche. I'm thinking of starting a new career as a cameraman. I could do an even worse job and get paid for it. I wish ...

[Gabby Johnson]

The assembly line almost drove me nuts even though I only visited for summer jobs while going to college in the early 1970s.
One year I welded spring clips onto shadow masks for 25-inch RCA color TVs and another I fed a machine that puts those cardboard disks into plastic bottle caps that always fall out.
Maybe in the long run the U.S. will be better off without those soul-killing jobs, but we still need to come up with something else for the middle class to do as far as work goes.

[MM]

Re: Bill Tyler's comment: I learned long ago that the softest material known to man is neither velour nor chinchilla fur. No, it's the metal they used for making the pentaprism humps on Pentax MX's, most of which dented under light polishing with a soft cloth.

[Adam Richardson]

Fun video to watch (I'm an X-T1 owner and expect the process is similar for the big brother). I don't think I would take away from it though that the top-plate is still the most cost-intensive part. In the "old" days the lower part of the camera had much less going on, but today with the sensor, all the motors, circuitry, processors, etc. I expect a higher proportion of the cost is there. I fully expect that all of that is put together robotically as the tolerances are going to be much tighter than what's involved on the top-plate. The lack of human involvement also makes it less photogenic :-)

Like adamct I was very surprised to see the Fujifilm name was hand-inked! There are ways of automating that, so I wonder if there is a technical or pride reason behind doing it by hand?

If you want to see what the insides of an older film camera used to look, Casual Photophile has some great exploded view photos of a Canon AE-1 that show the amazing intricacy under the hood. http://casualphotophile.com/2015/03/26/exploded-views-canon-ae-1/

[JG]

@ Peter Croft:

If you like manufacturing videos, then check out The Discovery Channel's How it's Made TV show.

[Bill Tyler]

Plus one to Mike's recommendation of The Pencil by Henry Petrosky. There's fascinating history and a lot of technological development involved, beginning with raw lumps of graphite and ending in the deceptively simple modern writing tool.

[Jon]

Thanks, Mike! I have read Longitude and liked it. I will look for those others at my library.

[Dave Sewart]

Some of my work colleagues point our engineering Students towards that old Raleigh bicycle factory film. Fascinating stuff... to the likes of ourselves! You can find it here:
http://film.britishcouncil.org/how-a-bicycle-is-made

[John Ironside]

To satisfy Peter Croft's hunger for manufacturing videos, I recommend the series showing the making of BMW's radical i3 electric car. In most versions there's no voice-over and some ambient sound. Some shots are quite slow. Of course, there's a lot they don't show.
See if you can spot the times a robot holds a part still for a camera's inspection! There are other videos that cover the carbon fibre bakery in Washington state.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa5_tudyAF8>
It's a big contrast to the car and transmission plants both in Europe and Detroit that I remember visiting in the 1980s.

[Adam Lanigan]

Passingly related to all of this, one of my all time favourite cinema shots is the opening scene to Edward Burtynksy's Manufactured Landscapes. The camera is at about chest height and moves at a moderate walking pace to the left through endless aisles upon aisles of some non-descript manufacturing plant in China - it goes on for close to five minutes with just the sound in the factory (and eventually some voiceover). It's a really elegant and impactful way to portray the immensity and complexity of these places and processes. I should definitely rewatch that. (The doc itself is also quite good outside of the opening scene.)

[Steve Biro]

And my X-T10 just arrived this week. Perfect timing!

[Tom Burke]

I'll echo adamet's comment - it is surprising just how many manual steps there were in that process, and I suspect in many manufacturing processes. We live in a period of time when the products from a very, very cheap labour force are available worldwide thanks to the highly-automated global distribution system. There have always been cheap places to manufacture, but the costs of distribution to the market were very high.

Of course, it won't last (at least, not based on manufacturing in China). As society in China develops, real wages will increase. Also, as the Yuan increases in value vis-a-vis the US$, £, €, etc so prices for manufactured goods will increase in those currencies. Enjoy it while it lasts!

[Zach]

On the topic of books on the making of stuff, another interesting read if you're into that sort of thing, is Factory - though I'm having a hard time finding a link to it - essentially discussion the evolution of factory design in Britain. Will dig up and post.

[Dave Karp]

This is great stuff.

Here is a video of how my camera is (was actually) made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72eKejgO6eQ

[Zach]

Took a while to find, but I believe this was the book I was referring to - http://www.amazon.com/Factory-Reaktion-Books-Gillian-Darley/dp/1861891555 - not well reviewed by the single reviewer, but I enjoyed it at the time.