[blcArmadillo]

While not a lens shaped from ice there are people who have been working on lenses made from untraditional materials. For example here is a guy, Prof. Joshua Silver's, who has been working on eyeglasses for the developing world. From https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/302550.php:

> Each lens is made of two flexible membranes that move either inward or outward depending on the amount of fluid - a silicone solution - they contain.

> The lenses are connected to a small syringe that sits on each arm of the glasses, and the wearer can adjust a dial on the syringe to pump fluid in or out of each lens. When fluid is pumped in, the power of the lens is increased - correcting hyperopia, or farsightedness - while pumping fluid out decreases lens power, correcting nearsightedness.

Additionally he gave a Ted talk on the subject https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liqui.... Pretty interesting stuff. Granted this is all circa 2009-2015. Not sure what the current status of the project is.

[dekhn]

don't forget people making mirrors using spinning liquid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_mirror_telescope

[baybal2]

My favourites are the liquid crystal lenses. Essentially they are micron scale Fresnel lenses controlled by electric field. No moving parts, very thin, ideal for something like a camera module.

I'm surprised that nobody managed to commercialise it in that niche yet.

[zeristor]

Do you have a link for that? They have used holographic optical elements to make shorter SLR lenses, although I don't think the image quality was excellent, but if they went to the trouble it must have been fairly good.

[dekhn]

doesn't really seem commercial grade yet: https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/10/05/this-smartp...

[moron4hire]

I've been wanting to make a liquid lens VR headset to try to solve for vergence-accommodation conflict.