Re:Reflected hidden faces in photographs revealed in pupil
by tanzam75 on Friday December 27, 2013 @11:13AM
(#6971162)
> Simple layman's explanation (from a layman): lenses spread light out a bit as the light passes through, so the red wavelengths hit the sensor in a slightly different spot than the blue wavelengths.
What you've described is chromatic aberration.
Diffraction refers to the spreading of waves around an obstacle -- such as the aperture blades in your camera. No lens need be involved -- you can get diffraction with a pinhole camera.
As a result, higher pixel densities will cause light from a single point to be spread across multiple pixels, with different wavelengths going to different pixels. Software can probably reconstruct the image somewhat, but I'm sure you'll hit a limit where there is too much interference to get the image any sharper no matter how many pixels you squeeze in.