A method and device for obtaining information from a scene. A beam of photons associated with a scene is separated into a plurality of photon sub-beams. At least two photon sub-beams are optically encoded to generate at least two corresponding encoded photon sub-beams. Each encoded photon sub-beam is encoded based on a corresponding encoding function. The encoded photon sub-beams are combined to generate a combined photon beam. A detection device detects the combined photon beam to generate image data. The image data is decoded based on the plurality of encoding functions to generate a plurality of sub-images. Each sub-image corresponds to one of the at least two photon sub-beams of the plurality of photon sub-beams.