An imaging system, methodology, and various applications are provided to facilitate optical imaging performance. The system contains a sensor having one or more receptors and an image transfer medium to scale the sensor and receptors in accordance with resolvable characteristics of the medium, and as defined with certain ratios. Also provided are digital images that contain a plurality of image pixels, each image pixel containing information from about one sensor pixel, each sensor pixel containing substantially all information from about one associated diffraction limited spot in an object plane. Methods of making digital images are provided.