The heart of this wizardry is the Micro Lens Array, developed by Ren Ng and born out of his prize winning doctoral thesis of 2006. Since 2006 Mr. Ng has been working to transform the idea into a product that can be brought to market and it looks like they are very close.
The Lytro camera captures more light data, from many angles, than is possible with a conventional camera. But the raw light data comes to life only with software that lets a viewer switch points of focus. This allows still photographs to be explored as never before. They become interactive, living pictures.
Head over to the Lytro site and check it out. For 3D and 2D compositing uses this could be really sharp.
