A light field is a set of light emitted from every point in every direction in a space. A light field camera refers to a camera with a microscope array of tens of thousands of micro lenses disposed between a main lens and a photo sensor. In a light field camera, after receiving rays coming from the main lens and before transmitting the rays to the photo sensor, each micro lens in the microscope array separates out focus rays and performs conversion on data of the rays to achieve digital record. Built-in software operates on “expanded light field” to trace a placement of each ray on imageries at different distances, and a subsequent focusing process such as “refocusing” i.e., to refocus on a shot scene at any depth, is performed by a computer to obtain a clearer photo.
During a shooting process of the light field camera, light field data captured is four-dimensional data, i.e., two-dimensional spatial data and two-dimensional angle data. Due to limited number of sensor units in the light field camera, the light field camera has to compromise on a resolution of spatial data to achieve a given resolution of angle data, therefore the resolution of the spatial data in light field data is low.