Light field camera

One type uses an array of micro-lenses placed in front of an otherwise conventional image sensor to sense intensity, color, and directional information.

Lippmann's experimental results included crude integral photographs made by using a plastic sheet embossed with a regular array of microlenses, or by partially embedding small glass beads, closely packed in a random pattern, into the surface of the photographic emulsion.

[2][3][4] In 2004, a team at Stanford University Computer Graphics Laboratory used a 16-megapixel camera to demonstrate that pictures can be refocused after they are taken.

[2] Research has shown that its maximum baseline is confined to the main lens entrance pupil size which is small relative to stereoscopic setups.

[7] This design reduces the chromatic aberrations and loss of boundary pixels seen in microlens arrays, and allows greater spatial resolution.

The light is routed separately through the shorter and longer sides of the rectangle, producing two focal points in the image.

[14][15] Lytro was founded by Stanford University Computer Graphics Laboratory alumnus Ren Ng to commercialize the light field camera he developed as a graduate student.

[21] Raytrix has offered several models of plenoptic cameras for industrial and scientific applications since 2010, with field of view starting from 1 megapixel.

[22][23] d'Optron and Rebellion Photonics offer plenoptic cameras, specializing in microscopy and gas leak detection, respectively.

The prototype is built around a Nikon Eclipse transmitted light microscope/wide-field fluorescence microscope and standard CCD cameras.

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories's (MERL) light field camera[7] is based on the principle of optical heterodyning and uses a printed film (mask) placed close to the sensor.

[29] A mask-based design avoids the problem of loss of resolution, since a high-resolution photo can be generated for the focused parts of the scene.

[32] A collaboration between University of Bedfordshire and ARRI resulted in a custom-made plenoptic camera with a ray model for the validation of light-field geometries and real object distances.

[38] PlenoptiCam is a GUI-based application considering Lytro's and custom-built plenoptic cameras with cross-platform compatibility and the source code being made available online.