My go to for light field cameras would probably be this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEMP3XEgnws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEMP3XEgnws It expl

My go to for light field cameras would probably be this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEMP3XEgnws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEMP3XEgnws It explains the specifics of how light field cameras work quite well, but doesn't go too deep into light fields. For more of an overview of light fields in general, I can recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXdKVisWAco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXdKVisWAco My answer to your question would be that light field cameras sample discrete perspectives from a 4D light field. These samples can either be 1) combined directly (requires a very high view density) 2) interpolated to try to recover the continuous 4D light field function (this is an active area of research), 3) downsampled to volumetric 3D (Google's approach with "Welcome to light field" etc.), or 4) downsampled to 2D + depth (a depth map) Each of these use different methods.