How about never having to worry about focus?

A friend sent me this link recently - if this comes to fruition, it will change the way we think and shoot for sure:

http://mashable.com/2011/06/22/lytro/

Another one: http://raytrix.de/index.php/r11.185.html

What a strange coincidence. Many years ago I was working on my own RPG world with aliens and their own physics. For my aliens, monsters, and robots I used what these people are calling plenoptics. Mine weren't limited like these are in their test phase. But that was all just so much imagination. These guys are turning fantasy into some form of reality. What I can see immediately will be fractal optics with real world practical uses on a sub $500 Giga-, Tera-, Peta-Pixel still and video all-in-one device that eventually has zero compromises between the two uses.

Throw in sensor data such as infrared, thermography, the ability to image sounds, and other cool things and now we have a do all sensor where new privacy schemes may be devised to counter the abilities of a future not yet realized.



Adobe Plenoptics

It's all about simple math: FFT. No magic at all, just enough processing power(mostly processors - the more the better)

The above technology requires super nano technology hd sensors, super high quality lenses, super processing power, and a lot of sunlight. If a 50 megapixel camera now cost $45,000+. Divide that by 19 element plenotics lens and you get less than a 2 megapixel "all in focus" photo.

The inventor got the idea from bees.

Some telescopes use a similar technology, but each element concentrates in a very small part of the sky.

Stone Age Engineering: Make a Periscope Lens. Photograph against its focal plane of the very high quality mirror. Everything will be in focus.

The other 2 systems seem to be more practical, with a better resolution and less expensive.

Well another take on the idea might be to use a cluster of individual extremely high resolution sensors/lenses that can function as a compound plenoptic "eye". Would that require a new way to weave an intelligible image from all those different perspectives into something people can see?

AllFractUp: it's all about SDL, that is Software Defined Lensing.

Here are some details:


http://www.creative-technology.net/CTECH/SDL.html

Anyway, it's a great leap.