You ask what use cases benefit from Lytro? How about choosing DOF after the fact for artistic reasons? Correcting misfocused shots – arguably a shallow DOF/fast-paced photographer’s dream? Creating animations from a still photo, including the ability to shift perspective and utilize parallax to simulate a 3D image? Simulate an even shallower DOF than what you had at the time of capture?
And that says very little about the benefits still to come with video, marriage with light field displays, and so on.
These may not appeal to you, but may certainly appeal to ‘some’. And that’s what new technology needs: ‘some’ people to believe in a product so that the tech can be invested in and allowed to mature. As this happens, the tradeoffs will be mitigated, emergent properties of the tech will undoubtedly appear, and appeal will broaden from ‘some’ to ‘many’.
At least, that’s the hope 🙂
Just out of curiosity, why would you say the Pelican concept for a smartphone is a better approach?
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.