Lytro digital camera lets you refocus after shooting images

Mountain View start-up Lytro announced it will deliver the biggest change to photography since the transition from film to digital sometime later this year. The company will reveal a new type of digital camera that will enable you to adjust the focus of your image after shooting it. Full details and a demonstration of the technology can be found at AllThingsD.

The breakthrough is a different type of sensor that captures what are known as light fields — basically, all the light that is moving in all directions in the view of the camera. That offers several advantages over traditional photography, the most revolutionary of which is that photos no longer need to be focused before they are taken.

This means capturing that perfect shot of your fast-moving pet or squirming child could soon get a whole lot easier. Instead of having to manually focus or wait for autofocus to kick in and hopefully center on the right thing, pictures can be taken immediately and in rapid succession. Once the picture is on a computer or phone, the focus can be adjusted to center on any object in the image, also allowing for cool artsy shots where one shifts between a blurry foreground and sharp background and vice versa.