Kúla Bebe mirror based lens adaptor turns your smartphone into a true 3D camera

Sep 27, 2016 | By Andre

The tech world has been afloat with all manner of VR and augmented reality headsets and peripherals that provide the user with a screen based spatial awareness like never before. Unfortunately, no smart phone officially released up until now has native support of 3D capture or display technology.

And even though 3D capture smart phones like Google’s Project Tango promise change will one day arrive, the recent release of the iPhone 7 suggest it might be another couple years before 3D capture sensors are built right in out of the box.

So when Kúla, the Icelandic accessory company already established in 3D adapter technology for DSLR cameras announced the Kúla Bebe smartphone accessory capable of creating 3D imagery with the smartphone you already have, my ears perked interested just a little.

The device is based on a four mirror system that is attached directly to the front of the camera lens via a simple and stylish plastic modification. As seen in the video below, these mirrors, along with the software that runs behind the scenes, splits your lens in half so separate photos can be made from unique perspectives capable of producing a 3D image in the same way traditional two lens 3D capture technology can.

From a technical perspective, the photographs capture ultimately depend on the resolution of your smart phones camera (if my understanding is correct, you basically get half the resolution you would due to the image split). Also, for a price tag of $79, some of you might rather just wait for the phone companies to develop a proper 3D capture camera.

But for those of you that don’t want to wait, the add-on outputs (available November 2016) can be viewed using a wide range of 3D processes like VR, 3D TV, Cinemabox, Stereoviewer and even the classic View-master. Determining how practical it is to develop 3D for all of these applications is possibly best left to another article, but the company itself suggests the following: “We recommend anaglyph for the nostalgics; VR for the hipsters and top-bottom 3D TV format for the 3D enthusiasts.”

While not convinced quite yet for myself, I find the technology would be great for social media image apps like snapchat, instagram and even Facebook. Where sharing little blips of your every day life is what makes services like that so popular. And if you are someone that is eager to get your hands on this little gadget, it might be worth pre-ordering today because the company is actually still in the process of finalizing production costs, so there is a good chance the price will increase when all the numbers are added up.

It is worth noting that the system doesn’t actually work with the newest iPhone7 because of its dual lens camera that simply throws off how the Bebe interface works. So it is yet to be seen how long the Bebe 3D lens will remain relevant once released.