A new angle on imaging

Capturing the direction of light beams can make for after-the-fact focusing - All cameras capture the intensity of light as it strikes their imaging chips. Color filters provide a second set of data, sorting the rays into different wavelengths. But new devices–including one produced commercially and others still in the lab–are starting to capture a third piece of information: angle. This allows cameras to go beyond focusing on a single plane to taking images at many different depths of a scene at once. Cameras that capture both intensity and angle will allow for refocusing already-snapped pictures, lensless cameras, and the creation of 3-D images with a single camera, according to researchers in several competing groups.