A method is described for recovering the distance of objects in a scene from images formed by lenses. The recovery is based on measuring the change in the scene's image due to a known change in the three intrinsic camera parameters: (1) distance between the lens and the image detector; (2) focal length of the lens, and (3) diameter of the lens aperture. The method is parallel, and requires only simple local computations. In contrast to stereo vision and structure-from-motion methods, the correspondence problem does not arise. The proposed method for depth-map recovery can also be used for (1) obtaining focused images (i.e. images having large depth of field) from two images having finite depth of field, and (2) rapid autofocusing of computer-controlled video cameras.