Originally posted by TValand So.. To be able to reach the insane resolutions we are imagining, you'd have to throw the lens out of the equation..
I've forgotten most of my high school physics, but maybe you'd know this.
If in the future, you could make an imaging sensor of a material that could flex/morph into a parabolic shape, would this create an effect similar to refraction? Flat equals no zoom, curve the sensor inwards to zoom in and outwards to get wide angle shots.
Flexing surfaces is a nice concept and could work. Indeed in some applications we already have that. "Adaptive optics" (that is the name) is already employed for mirrors in telescopes. It is used to locally adapt the surface of the mirror to counteract atmospheric turbulences. Then there is "Active optics", which flexes the mirror surface to counteract the gravitational deforming of large and thin mirrors, when the telescope is moved. Both technologies work very well and hand in hand.
You could flex surfaces in a way to achive a variable focal length with just a single lens and without moving the lens mechanically (as is done now with the internal variator group of a zoom). That is basically the same technology our eye employs to focus on different distances.
Having a curved sensor has additional merrits, because it makes lens design easier. For instance you wouldn't need to correct a lens for curvatore of field, which greatly simplifies design and reduces colour aberrations. In large and fast astronomical telescopes large, curved sensors (sensor arrays) are already in usesuccessfully.
Ben