The article repeats the standard erroneous concept of "single point perspective", which it says is what a pinhole camera produces.<p>"instead of producing an image from a single point perspective, as would a pinhole, its straw counterpart produces a multipoint perspective from an array."<p>The traditional meaning of single point perspective is a drawing technique which uses a single vanishing point (rather than multiple vanishing points, one for each set of parallel lines in space).<p>The technique of using straws will produce a parallel projection of some kind, depending on the design of the camera. It isn't a "multipoint perspective" just because it's a parallel projection. This is so basic.
Interesting. This is similar to how some X-ray and gamma ray detectors did work or work in astronomy. Because you can't focus with lenses, you use narrow tubes (collimators) to only gather the light from a certain region of the sky. Note that most x-ray telescopes use focusing Wolter optics nowadays, consisting of nested shells of reflective material. Collimating optics are also used to detect particles, I believe.
This is the way fiber optic lenses used to work: Take a bundle of a few thousand optical fibers and you have a flexible "lens" that can see around corners or into small holes. They're not used much any more because it's difficult to keep the bundle coherent on both ends, and tiny high-res TV cameras are dirt cheap now.
It'd be great to see some photos with more depth. Not having perspective is going to make ordinary rectangular objects like walls and streets look weird. This would be like a zoom lens, except presumably all the pixels merge to a blur with greater distance.