"Leonardo da Vinci sketched out tanks, helicopters, and mechanical calculators centuries before the first examples were built. Now another of his flights of imagination has finally been realized—an imaging device capable of capturing every optical aspect of the scene before it.
 Lytro, a Silicon Valley start‑up, has just launched the world’s first consumer light-field camera, which shoots pictures that can be focused long after they’re captured, either on the camera itself or online. Lytro promises no more blurry subjects, and no shutter lag waiting for the camera’s lens to focus. A software update to the camera, coming soon, will even let you produce 3-D images.
 (...) The next generation of light-field optical wizardry promises ultra-accurate facial-recognition systems, personalized 3-D televisions, and cameras that provide views of the world that are indistinguishable from what you’d see out a window.
 (...)" - Amira

"Instead of merely recording the sum of all the light rays falling on each photosite, a light-field camera aims to measure the intensity and direction of every incoming ray. With that information, you can generate not just one but every possible image of whatever is within the camera’s field of view at that moment. (...) The information a light-field camera records is, mathematically speaking, part of something that optics specialists call the plenoptic function. (...) It’s a function of five dimensions, because you need three (x, y, and z) to specify the position of each vantage point, plus two more (often denoted θ and φ) for the angle of every incoming ray. 
(...) “Viewers already decide what they see in a picture. Pick any artwork that speaks to you, think about what you see in it, and then ask someone else. They will see something different.” 
 - Amira