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).

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-03-12. (read more »)

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-03-12. (read more »)

Earlier this month, Adobe announced that there would be three upcoming improvements to the DNG camera raw “standard” that would improve performance. I’ve not historically converted my RAW files to DNG, but performance improvements would certainly be a big factor in a decision to move to that workflow.

I don’t know whether any of the announced improvements have actually made it into Adobe Lightroom 4, but I the upgrade from version 3 to 4 last night ($79), converted some files to DNG, and ran tests. Navigation and editing was as sluggish as ever on my 12-core Mac Pro (with plenty of RAM)—I couldn’t tell if there were improvements when working with DNGs. Then, I did some exports to 1920-pixel JPG files:

Test 1: 28 ARW raw files from Sony NEX-5N
ARW->JPG, 2010 Process: 52 seconds
[ARW/DNG]->JPG, 2010 Process: 40 seconds
DNG export 23% faster

Test 2: 28 CR2 raw files from Canon 7D
CR2->JPG, 2012 Process: 62 seconds
[CR2/DNG]->JPG, 2012 Process: 43 seconds
DNG export 30.6% faster

Here’s the CPU graph for the export process. You can see the clear improvement in CPU utilization in the DNG export.

CR2->JPG export (green), DNG->JPG export (orange)
24 virtual cores in 12-core Mac Pro

It does seem that there are real reasons to convert raw files to Adobe’s DNG raw format. If Adobe continues to improve DNG performance, I’ll likely move my workflow over to DNG conversion upon import.

I love Lightroom—it is my photo organization and processing app of choice—but in general, Adobe Lightroom 4 feels sluggish, and it took as many as 6 seconds to move between Library and Develop modes (inconsistent, presumably due to caching). No interface move should take 6 seconds on this computer. I hope there is a performance update in the near future that deals with the poor performance.¹

It is really exciting to be able to post pictures from the Lytro camera, now. :) I posted 50 pictures of Schrep and Erin’s cats…

… and an assorted gallery from the past 10 months, including pictures of Coco Rocha from our photo shoot back in July of 2011.

Tweets posted by @echeng during the week of 2012-03-05. (read more »)

This was my first motion dolly timelapse attempt. We learned a lot that night; somehow, multiple failures still resulted in a video! Thanks to Jody Elliott for loaning me her 1Ds Mark III for the shoot and to Jason Bradley for shooting with me and hauling the gear down from the Bay Area.