About Eric Cheng

Director of Photography, Lytro. Underwater photographer, cellist, technologist, skeptic.

Lytro @ Maker Faire

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Eric Cheng

Lytro spent the weekend at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012, a fantastic festival of DIY enthusiasts in celebration of invention, creativity and resourcefulness. Our booth was completely mobbed for the 2-day event, giving everyone there a chance to play with a Lytro light field camera in person. We ran continuous photo walks, encouraging attendees to wander the fairgrounds in search of interesting light field compositions.

One of the great things about Maker Faire is that it fosters hands-on creativity in children. Many booths offered creative space for kids to experiment. We had a few kids using the Lytro camera during photo walks, which is always exciting for us. Some of the kids who came to the booth already knew everything about the camera, and could easily have led the photo walks for us!

We’d like to congratulate Jeremiah Cohick, Komei Harada, Ingo Richeter, and David Lytle for winning Lytro’s Maker Faire Picture Challenge. All of them posted living pictures to win free tickets in our Maker Faire Challenge

Also, special thanks to beta-tester extraordinaire Grant Hendrick, to the Lytro employees and others who volunteered at our booth, and to the Maker Faire staff who made the booth and photo walks possible last weekend. See you at the next Maker Faire!

More Lytro living pictures from Maker Faire are embedded below. Continue reading →

Annular solar eclipse in light field

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Eric Cheng

Did you see the “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse last Sunday? Lytro camera owners and employees have been sending in solar eclipse pictures taken with the Lytro light field camera. Living pictures of people enjoying the eclipse worked well, as did pictures of the various methods used to project the eclipse onto safe viewing surfaces. Continue reading →

How Weird Street Faire in Living Pictures

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Eric Cheng

San Francisco is a city that is well known for its street fairs, which draw eclectic crowds who are virtually begging to have their portraits taken. About a week ago, a few Lytro employees went to the 13th annual How Weird Street Faire, the longest-running electronic music street festival in North America. The faire is run as a fundraiser benefitting the World Peace through Technology Organization. Continue reading →

Tip: Photographing “the present”

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Eric Cheng

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 or her 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:

… and 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.
Continue reading →

Lytro and Stephen Goldblatt, Cinematographer

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Eric Cheng

One of the great things about being Director of Photography at Lytro is that is gives me the opportunity to discuss image making with a lot of interesting people.

Last week, I met with Stephen Goldblatt, A.S.C., who has been cinematographer / Director of Photography for over 30 movies, including The Help, Julie & Julia, Charlie Wilson’s War, Batman Forever, Lethal Weapon, and others.

We spent an hour chatting about the cameras and workflow used in Hollywood movies, and about how the potential of light field video might make its mark in movies in the long term. These are truly exciting times!

Lytro demo at AsiaD / AllThingsD

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Eric Cheng

On October 20, 2011, Charles Chi (Lytro’s Executive Chairman) and I went on stage with technology columnist Walt Mossberg at AsiaD in Hong Kong to give a live demonstration of the newly-announced Lytro camera. During the on-stage demo, I snapped a living picture of Walt Mossberg holding a Lytro camera, imported it into our desktop application, and shared it to the web:

We also demonstrated parallax shifts and 3D. We don’t currently show those features online, but I put together an animated image so you can see what our camera can do. Continue reading →

Living pictures of the last Space Shuttle mission ever

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Eric Cheng

Shortly after midnight on the evening of July 20, 2011, my phone rang. On the other end of the line was Philip Scott Andrews, a photographer who currently works for the New York Times. Philip had received a Lytro prototype camera and was charging it up on his way to the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center to photograph the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Philip has been photographing NASA Space Shuttle missions for many years, and having a Lytro on the ground at the landing site for STS-135, the last Space Shuttle mission ever, was very special—the beginning of a new era in photography juxtaposed with the end of another era. We posted a few of Philip’s light field pictures this week and managed to catch up with him for a short interview. Continue reading →

Spaceships, grumpy kids and gardens

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Eric Cheng

Over the past few weeks, Lytro employees and select testers in the field have been using prototype Lytro light field cameras to document their lives outside of the office. We’ve updated our Living Pictures Gallery with 11 new light field pictures; the selection includes pictures taken by Kira Wampler (Lytro’s VP of Marketing), Heather Champ, and professional photographers Jason Bradley and Philip Andrews.

Especially exciting are some of the pictures that Philip took at the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis after STS-135, the last shuttle mission ever. We’ve got an interview with Philip in the works, and will post more about the experience soon.

Coco Rocha in Light Field 3D

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Eric Cheng

Last month, we featured supermodel Coco Rocha in the first high fashion photo shoot using a Lytro light field camera. All living pictures taken by Lytro cameras can be refocused interactively by you, our viewers, but living pictures are also inherently 3D. So here we go: Supermodel Coco Rocha, in 3D! Continue reading →