Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-05-14. (read more »)

I looked out of the window during a flight from Seattle to San Francisco last Sunday and noticed the shadow of the plane’s contrail. This video was shot with an iPhone 4s and sped up 8x (with contrast increased).

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-05-07. (read more »)

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-04-30. (read more »)

Internalizing Lytro light field photography techniques can take time and practice, but there’s an easy one that you can master in no time at all. Get a friend to hold an interesting object out in front of him and take a picture, holding your camera really close to the object. We call this picture “the present” (as in the verb, not the noun).

Here’s a living picture of Alex, one of Lytro’s handsome designers, presenting his friend’s band’s CD:

Here’s a picture of me taking that shot. I’m zoomed out all the way (full wide), and the front of my camera is about 4″ away from the CD. Note that 4″ means 4″—not 6″, 8″ or 12″. I’ve had Alex tilt the CD so it takes up less of the frame.

You can shoot from further away and still get great refocus by moving backward and zooming in. Here’s a shot taken at about 2x zoom (just over half zoomed in everyday mode).

Here’s a picture of me taking that picture. I’m zoomed in just over half way in everyday mode (about 2x).

Mastering “the present” gives you an easy way to take highly-refocusable living pictures of your friends. Give it a try!

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-04-23. (read more »)

Here’s my eye (self-portrait with a Lytro camera):

Here’s a lovely Italian woman’s eye, taken today at a Lytro press conference at the Trienalle in Milan.

Mine looks kinda dead in comparison!

Here’s a picture of me taking that picture:

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Source: @ocalao

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-04-16. (read more »)

I spent Thursday and Friday at the e.g. conference in Monterey, California, which was incrediblly inspiring. I feel really lucky to have been a part of it.

Each day, the roughly 300 attendees were given the opportunity to hear hours and hours of presentations by talented people who have done incredible things. While I found the content of the presentations to be fascinating, what I really loved was that everyone involved was doing something driven by passion, and while there were many paths to the discovery of a particular passion, they had all figured it out (some were born into it, and some only discovered it after having gone through meandering paths of adventure in other fields).

There was, however, one thing that stood out, and not in a good way: classical music.

Music at conferences like TED and e.g. are often based in the avant-garde and experimental, which can, of course, be interesting and thought-provoking. Classical instruments like the piano, violin and cello are usually part of some kind of crossover performance. The musicians are often quite talented, and the audience loves this stuff. During the 2 days I was at e.g., there were exactly two purely-classical performances, which starkly contrasted in quality when compared to the other presentations. The first was a short solo piano piece that wasn’t very well prepared, and the second, a Brahms piano trio that was pretty much sight read on stage. After the piano trio sight-reading performance, something incredible happened: the crowd gave a standing ovation! I was thoroughly confused and disappointed. If this same performance had taken place in a concert hall, all of the musicians in the audience would have walked out.

Curators at conferences like e.g. and TED need to feature classical performances that are as high in caliber as the rest of the presentations—or, leave them out entirely.

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-04-09. (read more »)

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-04-02. (read more »)

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-03-26. (read more »)

The last three nights of photographing the aurora borealis / northern lights in Fairbanks, Alaska, have been tremendously educational. When I was planning this trip last month, I had never been on a night photography trip to such a cold place, and although there are many online resources with tips on what to do in such an environment, there is no replacement for actual experience.

Luckily, nature provided us with the perfect ramp up. Days 1 and 2 featured mild auroras, which gave us time to learn how to keep our cameras and bodies working for hours in the freezing cold (-5ºF to -15ºF) . On day 3, an absolutely epic aurora rocked our worlds, and photographer Julian Cohen and I ran around in the snow, yelling in excitement. From 1am to past 3:30am, the aurora borealis covered nearly the entire night sky, blanketing it with snaking ethereal ribbons of astral beauty. I have never experienced anything like it. I hope one day, you will get to see what we saw last night. Until then, please enjoy these photos, and this timelapse video that I put together. (read more »)

Photographer Julian Cohen braves the cold Alaskan night to photograph the northern lights.
Here’s his shot of me.

It’s 4:20am, and we’ve just returned from a full night shooting stars and the northern lights in Fairbanks, Alaska. The sky was incredibly clear tonight, and although we only saw obviously-visible aurora borealis for 15 minutes or so, it was an extremely productive night, photographically. I shot some timelapse sequences that I’m excited to process, and had to made some tough decisions (e.g., take timelapse of the aurora, or relocate camera to a place with good foreground subject?).

It’s way too late for me to process all of the pictures, now, but I suspect a good chunk of tomorrow afternoon will be spent on the computer. ;)

I arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska this late afternoon, picked up a rental SUV, and checked into the Hampton Inn, which is a fantastic (and inexpensive) little hotel. Julian and Ildi had arrived at 2am this morning, and after a day’s rest, they were ready to head out for our first night of looking for the aurora borealis (northern lights).

None of us have spent a lot of time in cold places, so we bundled up in a way that seemed like it would, theoretically, keep us warm in the freezing Alaskan night. After driving around for awhile, we ended up at Chatanika Peak, which is about 30 miles north of Fairbanks; it was our first night out, and we didn’t want to drive too far. The sun didn’t set until nearly 8pm, and by then the temperature had already dropped from 19º F to -1º F—freezing! By 10pm, it was completely dark, and the temperature had dropped further to -9º F. There was no sign of the northern lights, so Julian and I shot the sky and warm light pollution coming from Fairbanks. 30 miles away, the lights from Fairbanks still lit up a considerable portion of the sky.

The first picture in this post is the first aurora we saw. It was extremely faint, and there was a cloud obscuring most of it—we almost missed it! Strangely, there was also a green laser shining straight up into the sky, which also came out clearly in the picture. At around 11:30pm, the clouds had moved in, and we decided to call it a night. We packed up and started to head back. By then, the temperature had dropped even more, to -16º F, and Julian and Ildi were starting to really feel the cold. We have some work to do tomorrow to make sure we can make it through 6 hours of shooting in the extreme cold.

As we approached Fairbanks, we noticed a bright green stripe spanning the sky: aurora! We pulled over and took some more shots.

Northern lights over a random highway isn’t so exciting, but it was still pretty cool to see. A few minutes later, it was almost too dim to see any green. Also, when we pulled into the hotel parking lot, there was another bright aurora, just sitting there in the sky. Aurora is everywhere, here! (but we couldn’t shoot these effectively—clouds had moved in)

Equipment notes:

My 5D Mark II did very well at -16º F. I shot nearly 300 pictures in 3 hours, and the battery was still half full. By the end of the evening, the metal parts of the camera were too cold to touch without having gloves on. I packed all my freezing camera gear into a Pelican case and brought it into the warm hotel room sealed; the gear inside will warm up slowly (to avoid condensation). Per the advice of experienced cold-weather shooters, I kept batteries in my inner pockets and only put them in the camera when I was shooting.

I wore:

Head: synthetic, wind-proof beanie, parka hood
Top: capilene base layer, fleece pullover, Canada Goose Expedition parka
Bottom: capilene base layer, fleece pants, shell
Shoes: liner, wool socks, Sorel Caribou boots
Gloves: Thinsulate fingerless w/pull-over mit (these are magic)

For the most part, I was toasty warm during the 3 hours I spent outside. By the end of the evening, my toes were just starting to get cold, so I’ll probably throw a couple toe warmer heat packs in there tomorrow night. Hand warmers were useless when they were in contact with the outside air, but were very effective when sealed in insulated parka pockets (and would warm my hands when I stuck them in there).

I’m heading to Fairbanks, Alaska tomorrow with Julian Cohen to photograph the northern lights (I’ve only seen it once before). Land trips are so easy—there is so little gear to bring. I’m going to try to focus while I’m there, and am only bringing a few wide-angle lenses for my Canon SLRs. I will, however, bring a big zoom for the Sony NEX-5N. The goal is to shoot timelapse/stills with the Canon and stills with the Sony NEX-5N (no intervalometer for the Sony). (read more »)

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-03-19. (read more »)

Tesla Model X prototype; 7-seater electric car; 0-60 in < 5 seconds

I went to see the Tesla Model X prototype today, which was on display at Santana Row in San Jose. Tesla say that they have “exactly one” of these working prototypes, and it was cool to get to see it in person. I took video of the falcon wings opening; the Tesla reps said that 2-joint design only requires a couple feet of clearance from the side of the car to open.

I posted a bunch of pictures over at Google+. Aaron Logan came with me to the event and took a bunch of Lytro pictures of the car.

Vimeo and YouTube both are giving me grief tonight. I can’t seem to set a proper thumbnail for the video (and YouTube wouldn’t even let me upload).

Following in Nick Bilton’s footsteps, I took some close-up shots of the new iPad using a Lytro camera in creative mode. The Lytro camera can focus on its lens, so it’s really easy to get macro shots of detail. (read more »)

Yesterday, I heard a story about an Uber pedicab driver here at SXSW who was making a lot in tips by pedaling people around and letting them charge their devices via USB battery. Conferences like SXSW chew up mobile device batteries because people are Tweeting and using apps all day long, without any real opportunity to charge up during the day. One of our Lytro team members was so desperate that she climbed over the counter at a bar to charge her iPhone up.

I’ve been going to a lot of conferences lately, and finally bought a Mophie Juice Pack Plus because it’s more convenient than using an external battery and cable.

It’s awesome. It will more than charge up an iPhone from empty, which means that you can share it with your friends as they need power. Also, it is strangely satisfying to hold a larger mobile device. I actually find the iPhone (4S) more comfortable to use with the Mophie case than without. Highly recommended. The Juice Pack Air is even smaller and cheaper, but has a battery with 25% less charge capacity (people say that the Air won’t quite charge an iPhone from empty to full).