I worked on light fields at MIT and I'm a huge fan of this kind of tech. However, as others have said, the product story is lacking. No one cares about after-the-fact focusing as Lytro has always presented it.
A consumer novelty / gimmick won't sell hardware when there are already plenty of smartphone apps that will let you take and share photos in a gimmicky way.
If you want everyday consumer use, make a better camera for taking pictures and video of pets and kids. Make the camera that doesn't stop to focus. Make the camera with one button you hold down to open the shutter, and the camera does the rest (you can select the best shot later). You have to be better than a smartphone camera app, which is hard because smartphone photography is getting very, very good. Camcorders and GoPros in the $500-$1000 range are also very, very good. You'd have to be cheaper and more convenient with similar or better quality.
If you want professional use, you'll have to talk about the optics and image quality, or at least the artistic qualities of the result. Your software should fit into the pro's pipeline and produce a unique result of lasting value. The hardware can be expensive if necessary to meet this goal.
You probably know that light field tech can be used for selectable depth-of-field or extended depth-of-field at large apertures. In other words, it can make a camera that doesn't need to focus, even in low light when you want the lens wide open to minimize noise. Why Lytro chose to market it as a selectable DoF thing is baffling to me. My 2011 post on G+ got their attention[1] and they promised that an "all in focus" mode was coming soon. IIRC they did eventually ship it for their first camera, and for all I know this new one supports it too. But they're moving way too slowly and the website here makes the camera look like a concept rendering -- I was shocked to find in these comments a link to a hands-on with the thing at Engadget.
The killer app for professionals would be shooting video. You could eliminate the job of the "focus puller" in a live action video shoot and "focus" on the performances during the shoot, knowing you could pull focus (and extract 3D info!) in postproduction.
I told them as much when I talked to the CTO [0] at a presentation he gave at the UW [1]. I also wanted frame sync so I could use it with other cameras. And an external trigger (for wildlife, stop motion and true binocular vision). And the ability to send 3d animated random dot stereo gram gifs directly to instagram so I can boost my Klout score.
I think this is aimed squarely at professional use. All the examples were "you can't do this with your camera". The fact that chromatic aberration can be fixed by the computer means the lens needs only 11 pieces to do 8x zoom from 30-250mm and a 1:3 macro, and weighs only half a pound. In an interview with Engadget, Rosenthal said "We think a new shooting style should naturally evolve... to hold the camera around hip height." http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/22/lytro-illum/ You can embed an interactive image on a webpage and let people play with the composition of your photo, making a dynamic interactive artwork. Maybe it's not a huge market, but I can imagine a lot of artists being very excited about the potential.
> "We think a new shooting style should naturally evolve... to hold the camera around hip height."
I've a Panasonic G1, with an LCD that has multiple degrees of freedom (regular hinge, and then another hinge perpendicular to it). It's the best feature ever. It has allowed me to "unglue" the camera from my eye, and shoot from wherever I like.
Overhead, from the hip, from the side, way out over the handrail - if my arm can reach there, I can shoot from that place.
A consumer novelty / gimmick won't sell hardware when there are already plenty of smartphone apps that will let you take and share photos in a gimmicky way.
If you want everyday consumer use, make a better camera for taking pictures and video of pets and kids. Make the camera that doesn't stop to focus. Make the camera with one button you hold down to open the shutter, and the camera does the rest (you can select the best shot later). You have to be better than a smartphone camera app, which is hard because smartphone photography is getting very, very good. Camcorders and GoPros in the $500-$1000 range are also very, very good. You'd have to be cheaper and more convenient with similar or better quality.
If you want professional use, you'll have to talk about the optics and image quality, or at least the artistic qualities of the result. Your software should fit into the pro's pipeline and produce a unique result of lasting value. The hardware can be expensive if necessary to meet this goal.
Just my two cents.