Alex Fiel's Wigglegram Lens V2 Turns a Full-Frame Camera Into a Toy Pseudo-3D Snapper
Using three lenses in a row, this custom-built camera lens lets you capture data for "wiggle" animations in pseudo-3D.
Self-described creative technologist Alex Fiel has revisited an old and unusual project to create a better, more flexible version: meet the Wigglegram Lens V2, built for the Open Sauce '23 festival in San Francisco.
"In preparation for Open Sauce '23 in San Francisco, I wanted to revamp my previous Wigglegram Lens," Fiel explains of the project's origins. "I wanted to get variable aperture working like George Moua's [3D Stereoscopic Wiggle Lens] so I dove into that as well as making focusing faster and adapting the spacing to work on the full-frame sensor of my Sony A7R3."
The idea behind the Wigglegram Lens, and its second-generation successor, is simple: three small lenses split the incoming light so that the camera captures three smaller images rather than one big one. As the lenses are laid out on a horizontal line, each image is slightly different: one from a little to the left, one a little to the right, and one dead center. Split the picture into three and combine them into the frames of an animated GIF, and you've got a pseudo-3D effect in which the picture "wiggles" from side-to-side — hence the name.
Fiel's Wigglegram Lens V2 uses a 3D-printed frame to hold three small plastic lenses retrieved from used disposable cameras, each offering a 30mm focal length. The lens mechanism itself is entirely 3D-printed, and offers a choice of operating modes: fixed aperture, as with the original version, or a variable aperture stack. A focus ring, meanwhile, ensures that each shot can be dialed in just right.
"You'll get the best effect when choosing scenes/subjects with a lot of depth perpendicular to the sensor," Fiel explains of the lens's operation. "Flash can help as the sharp shadow it creates moves noticeably between the pictures. If you do end up trying this whole thing out, share your photos!"
Full instructions on building your own Wigglegram Lens are available on Fiel's Instructables page, with the 3D print files published to Printables under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.
