Refocussing photos retro-actively

by Karel Thönissen

Ren Nq has done remarkable research on a new type of camera. Instead of a single lense projecting the image on the backplane of the camera, he used a matrix of 90_000 micro-lenses that superimpose their images on the sensitive photo-area. That image is complete unrecognisable: it takes some very intricate algorithms to compute a normal image. However, due to the nature of the superimposed information and the fourier-analysis needed to recover any meaningful data, it is possible to compute a 3D model of the original scene. Knowing this, it is possible to compute a conventional image, for any given focal distance. Therefore, it is possible to refocus the images after the image has been taken. Watch these spectacular videos, knowing that each of these videos is computed from a single photo.