Íris Ólafsdóttir, Kúla’s founder and CEO, photographed at Photokina in Cologne with the company’s SLR product
Kúla Bebe is a lens attachment that turns any smartphone into a 3D-creating device. Clever!
If you spotted the iPhone 7 Plus launch and hung your head in sadness because the dual lenses weren’t for 3D photography, Kúla‘s new Bebe might be the solution you’re looking for. The product splits your lens in half, taking a photo from two different angles at once, turning it into a 3D scene.
Kúla have had a $180 solution for SLR photographers on the market for a couple of years, but this week the company announced its second product is shipping later this month.
“We are making the Kula Bebe available for smartphone photographers who love 3D,” says Íris Ólafsdóttir, the company’s founder, as she demos the product in action.
Easy and fun
As you might expect from a set of mirrors that goes in front of a camera phone lens, the quality you get in return is somewhat limited. If you’re looking for high-def 3D, you’re barking up the wrong lens, here, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t tremendous fun. The price tag might be a bit steep for what might be a bit of a gimmick, but at the same time, but for adventurous smartphone photographers, exploring the world in an additional dimension is fun.
Moo? An example Kúla wigglegram
In addition to the lens assembly which uses a set of carefully positioned mirrors to split the light before it hits the camera lens, the kit will ship with a cardboard viewer where you can insert your smartphone to see the images you’ve taken in 3D (think Google Cardboard type device) and a pair of red/blue glasses to watch anaglyph-rendered 3D images.
To actually turn the split-screen images into viewable content, the company also markets software to be able to view the 3D images in a variety of ways, including a red/blue glasses viewer, a side-by-side viewer for use in Google Cardboard type viewers (or, if you feel brave, going all cross-eyed), ViewMaster discs, coded for 3D televisions, or even so-called ‘wigglegrams’ to give the illusion of three-dimensionality.
Kúla is accepting pre-orders for Bebe at $79 for the full kit on its website at the moment.
“We are still trying to finalize the final production cost,” Ólafsdóttir says, suggesting that curious buyers should get their orders in before the price goes up as it starts shipping later this month. “We haven’t finalized the price for the product yet.”