What do you call a lensless camera? Veteran photogs will usually immediately point to pinhole cameras or camera obscuras. But apparently Bell Labs has developed something much different–and digital! In a nutshell, what the prototype does is uses an LCD as a grid of apertures looking at a scene. That scene is then transferred onto the sensor. So instead of using one aperture, it will probably make part of a scene F8 while the other part is f2. However, they stated that the images are never out of focus–which piques our curiosity even more. The sensor then pieces this all together to create an image.
Honestly, we’re not sure how this technology could be used practically unless it involved some sort of uber HDR contraption. To that end, we wonder if they got the inspiration from pinhole cameras with multiple apertures.
Via Engadget