The camera of the future may be lensless

The optics of the camera obscura ha­ve faithfully served photographers for ages. The recipe has been simple: a lens, aperture, dark box and something to record the light.

But the camera as we know it is changing. A revolution in digital imaging research could surpass the camera obscura in almost every technical way... It’s called computational photography, and it stems from the idea that if you can capture visual data instead of a true image, then the picture can be reconstructed with software. — NY Times