For years, focus controls on cameras were a mechanical process, involving the dilation of an aperture to control the amount of light permitted into the lens.  Nearsighted folks in the audience–you can do something similar.  Take off your glasses and pick up a piece of paper.  Poke a very small hole in the paper and look through it.  See what you can suddenly see with much more clarity than before?  A camera works much the same way.

But now, LensVector has developed a process–and received funding to manufacture–a process by which focus is now accomplished by “tunable liquid crystal displays”, essentially allowing cameras to become even smaller and less bulky than ever before.  LensVector’s backers–Samsung and Kodak among them–definitely have a stake in developing much smaller focus apparatuses.

In fact, Samsung actually expects to ship devices with the tunable liquid crystal display later this year.

How small is too small for a camera?  With developments like these, we might actually find out.