Joe ,
I took a quick look at the site you posted and just as quickly found some wrong statements and assumings .
From the web site you posted (
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm ) .
“Ordinarily light travels in straight lines through uniform air, however it begins to disperse or "diffract" when squeezed through a small hole (such as your camera's aperture). “
Wrong light does not squeeze through a small hole anymore than moths have balls .
And light travels in nearly straight lines except when refracting , reflecting , traveling through a strong gravitation field , like a black hole , or when traveling through a material having a gradation of density . The Author is confusing diffraction with interference patterns this is caused when light falling on a surface from the same source but through two different pathes , this light is made to converge on a surface and in some places on that surface , the two different path light rays happen to fall in phase doubling the energy , while at other places the two happen to fall exactly out of phase , canceling the energy .
The small hole will always have a higher amount of light reflecting off it’s edges for a given amount of light passing through than a large hole . It is the contact or partial contact with the edge of the aperture blades which deflects the travel of the light .
Next statement :
“ at some aperture the softening effects of diffraction offset any gain in sharpness due to better depth of field .”
This is not very accurate , diffraction does not really eliminate depth of field , it limit’s the sharpness mostly where there would have been high sharpness , ( at the accurately focused distance .
Depth of field is still available with lesser change in already out of focus distances .
Another one ,
For an ideal circular aperture, the 2-D diffraction pattern is called an "airy disk," after its discoverer George Airy. The width of the airy disk is used to define the theoretical maximum resolution for an optical system (defined as the diameter of the first dark circle).
Here the word diffraction is talking about dark rings which are caused by out of phase light canceling the energy at the image surface . ( Not diffraction )
The light deflected from one side of the aperture edge falls where light is also falling having been deflected from the other side of the same aperture hole . Interference not diffraction . Remember every aperture has an edge all the way around it so light can reflect from opposite sides and still land in the same place and this place can form a circle or more than one circle .
So if someone wants to call interference patterns " diffraction " OK , but this doesn’t prove it is not interference caused by reflections and out of phase energy misnamed for lack of understanding .
I was explaining something in a language everybody could use , not trying to impress anyone that I know everything , even if I do .