A 3D novelty camera, a shady marketing scheme, and a TikTok-fueled rebirth.
In the late 1980s, a mysterious plastic camera began popping up in the back pages of magazines and on late-night TV infomercials. It looked like it came from the future. It had four lenses. It promised “3D photos” without any of that pesky science behind actual 3D photography. That camera was the Nishika N8000.
Originally marketed as a high-end innovation, the N8000 was sold not in stores, but through an MLM-style scheme that promised distributors wild profits. Spoiler alert: they didn’t make money. The camera’s true function wasn’t quite what it claimed to be either. Rather than real stereoscopic 3D or lenticular output like you’d expect from a View-Master reel, it created four offset images meant to be printed and layered into lenticular prints. Technically, it worked. Practically? It was expensive, inconvenient, and clunky. The camera quickly fell into obscurity after the company behind it, Nishika Ltd., collapsed.
But fast forward to today. TikTok, Instagram, and Tumblr have dragged this forgotten camera back into the spotlight—this time on its own terms. Instead of lenticular prints, users are scanning all four frames and animating them into “wigglegrams.” These animated GIFs or video loops create a shimmering pseudo-3D effect that’s lo-fi, nostalgic, and perfect for the chaotic aesthetic of the current internet. It turns out the thing it failed at in the ’80s is exactly what gives it charm now.
Shooting with the N8000 today isn’t all fun and games, though. The camera is fully plastic, heavy for what it is, and not particularly reliable. It uses 35mm film, but requires very specific framing to get clean wigglegrams. If your film gets slightly misaligned during scanning, or if you don’t level the camera just right, the effect can look janky fast. It also has only one shutter speed, but three fixed apertures (f/8, f/11, f/19) that change based on your ISO setting. You’ll need bright light or fast film, ideally both.
Still, there’s a reason people keep bringing it back. There’s no other camera that does quite what it does. And even though it was born from a borderline scam, the creative uses people have found for it today are way more interesting than what it was originally made to do.
Whether you’re making glitchy GIFs or just want something weird to add to your collection, the Nishika N8000 is a reminder that sometimes, failure makes better art than success ever could.
