A new kind of digital camera could revolutionize point-and-click photography in 2012 with innovative use of light. YNN's Adam Balkin filed the following report.

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What may look like an oversized tube of lipstick could very well be the most game-changing piece of consumer technology in 2012. It's called the Lytro digital camera, and taking a picture with it is kind of like taking a shot with a room full of cameras and then processing all those shots with a supercomputer. It all happens with a simple click.

The process has its advantages. For starters, a photographer can focus any part of the shot after they’ve taken it.

“It is a lightfield camera and so what that means is that the Lytro camera captures all of the direction of light. So the other way to think about it is all of the light traveling at every point in space, and conventional cameras don't do that. Conventional cameras throw away the direction of light,” says Kira Wampler of Lytro.

That means everything from simply no more out of focus shots to using the technology to create art that sits somewhere between photography and video.

Right now, the obvious whiz bang feature to this is focusing the shot after taking a picture, but developers say there are a lot more possibilities for this technology than just that.

“All of these pictures are inherently 3D, so if you have a 3D TV, you'll be able to look at them on a 3D display and many other things to come over time as you think about capturing this multi-dimensional set of information when you take a picture,” says Wampler.

Simple software updates will also eventually give users control over things like shutter speed and aperture.

Pictures are shared in a viewer, so users can email them, throw them on Twitter and Facebook, and everyone can shift the focus, no special software required.

It’s possible to print shots, usually up to at least 5x7. The camera itself, which ships next month, is available for presale now at Lytro.com. It’s $400 for an 8 GB model, which holds around 350 shots. There’s also a $500, 16 GB model that holds about 750 pictures.