Then you need to check out ‘Lytro’ and Dr. Ren Ng’s material:
Rather than the camera just taking a picture of a scene that has been focused onto the back of a sensor, the camera equipment captures the details of the light in the area.
This allows the viewer of the final picture to define its own focal plane by using the information recorded about the light in the scene. The picture does not even have to be in focus and can actually be viewed as if it was taken with a set of cameras with multiple focal lengths, in short even an area that initially appears to be out of focus in the picture, can actually be zoomed into.
Take a look at the following examples, but double click on an area that appears out of focus.
Pictures
This is really cool, since it means you can take a picture of any 3D scene and not worry about any part of it being out of focus, it also means you can zoom in on a section of the scene and render it correctly, which would make photographing the electronics we take apart easier, and the resulting images would be more useful.
