Toshiba Lets You Refocus Photo After Taking a Picture

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- It's always a good thing when you're given a second chance. And now Toshiba (TOSBF) has come up with a way to enable you to redo photos that come out fuzzy.

According to a news report from Japan, Toshiba is about to unveil a tiny new camera module that will let you refocus a photograph after you've taken it.

The company has developed a small (1-cm) camera module for small electronic devices that contains more than 500,000 tiny lenses in front of the image sensor. It's similar to the way that some insects see the world.

Each lens allows you to record slightly different images, and some very nifty software in the camera will produce one large compound image. The camera will actually measure the proper distance to an object by measuring the small distances between the thousands of tiny images captured.

The camera module will also be able to do some interesting things with video, such as keeping a subject in focus in the foreground while allowing you to replace what is seen in the background.

It's not the first photo module to accomplish such feats. U.S.-based Lytro announced a similar product earlier this year but its module is much larger.

Toshiba is expected to make the official announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month. But the actual module might not be available in consumer products until later in 2013.

-- Written by Gary Krakow in New York

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Gary Krakow is TheStreet's senior technology correspondent.