The Lytro is a new play toy implementation of a commercially established technology:
http://www.raytrix.de/index.php/home.html

For a discussion of the trade-offs in the Lytro implementation:
http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/06/28/light-field-camera-from-lytro/

A modern digital camera lets you select a portion of a scene to focus on and records a high resolution image of the scene, focused on that portion. (If it all works right.) The Lytro records the "light field" and replays low resolution selections of focal distance. Sure they a DSP applications, whether the process is performed in the camera before the image is recorded or afterward. Modern digital cameras are built with one or more specialized DSP chips.

Dale B. Dalrymple

On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:11:19 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> After seeing discussino of the Lytro light-field camera, the first
> thought I had was that DSP would be pretty important in making it work.
> Yet I don't remember seeing any discussion of it.
> 
> The article describing the technology is:
> 
> http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/lfcamera-150dpi.pdf
> 
> it would seem to me that deconvolution would be related to the
> technology, though so far, (and not reading in so much detail) I didn't
> see it mentioned.
> 
> Does anyone else think this is a DSP problem?

I only got as far as the first few paragraphs -- but yes, it would seem 
that you'd need some serious computation to make it work.

-- 
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

After seeing discussino of the Lytro light-field camera, the
first thought I had was that DSP would be pretty important in
making it work. Yet I don't remember seeing any discussion of it.

The article describing the technology is:

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/lfcamera-150dpi.pdf

it would seem to me that deconvolution would be related to the
technology, though so far, (and not reading in so much detail)
I didn't see it mentioned.

Does anyone else think this is a DSP problem?

-- glen