We're in for a ride

I figured it was a good moment to take the plunge after realizing that I barely used my Sony camera while in Brazil. For some years now, I’ve harbored the desire to get a digital rangefinder.

The Bessa-R was the first camera I truly fell in love with, and later came the Minolta CLE. That was 15 years ago. As I moved away from film and began focusing mostly on digital photography, I convinced myself—mainly for budgetary reasons—not to pursue a digital rangefinder system.

After some intensive kleinanzeiging, a couple of weeks later I got rid of my Sony system and hopped on a train to the source: Wetzlar, Germany, where I had an arranged meeting with a Leica employee who would sell me a second-hand Leica M11.

This camera has been a joy to use. I won’t go all fanboy on the gear, but I’m happy to have in my hands a camera that brings me joy every time I use it—just as it did in the 2010s. I’m sharing this mostly to let you know that I will be posting photographic content more frequently. Here are some snapshots from the last few weeks since I got it.

…on the latest developments in AI

The latest releases from Anthropic, Claude Code, Cursor, and Cline hit a bit differently for me. I've been trying to stay in the loop and have been using LLMs constantly over the past few months, but until now, their coding assistance (even through GitHub's Copilot) always felt somewhat limited—sure, they could help complete code and maybe diagnose some syntax errors, but that was about it.

I’m not a developer or software engineer by any stretch, but I like to think I have enough technological savviness and knowledge to understand how software works and how to connect different components. I never fully developed the knowledge to write code from scratch, though– I took Pascal/Delphi classes when I was 15, but please.

For the first time, I’m genuinely impressed by the state of things. Claude Code just enabled me to build simple applications and tools that actually work. In just a week, I managed to build three tools that I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t have been able to create before. And they just worked—it’s insane.

I’m not rushing to form too many assumptions yet; I’m just taking it all in and observing. But I can share how excited I am about what this enables. I’ve talked a lot before about the democratization of technology (in a broad, interpretive sense of the term), like when digital cameras became widely available or when the Kodak Brownie put photography into the hands of everyday people. This feels like a similar moment.

Additionally, it seems like we’re finally breaking the siloed nature of these models and truly integrating them with other tools. I’ve seen some fascinating examples of how different models and data sources can be connected to create bespoke applications. ChatGPT's Deep Research, for instance, has given me some incredibly valuable insights, replacing—and saving—hours of deep-dive internet research across forums and obscure web pages.

To not leave you empty-handed, here are some links and a look at what I’ve built.

fix_6bit_exif

Leica M digital cameras use a 6-bit encoding system to identify attached lenses and store this information in the file's EXIF metadata. However, when using third-party lenses (such as Voigtländer, Zeiss, TTArtisan, or 7Artisans), photographers often must "borrow" a similar Leica lens code since these lenses don't have official Leica codes. This results in misleading metadata where your images appear to be shot with Leica lenses (typically Summicron) rather than your actual third-party glass. This application allows you to map those lenses and correctly fix the metadata.

framer

A tool for adding borders and captions to images. Easily create clean solid borders or Instagram-optimized frames with customizable padding, fonts, and EXIF date extraction. I made this one based on some old photos that I found of my grandfather.

n8n agents: calendar

Nate Herk's channel offers some great fresh takes on what’s possible with LLM models, even with little technical knowledge. In the video above, he demonstrates how different agents can connect to his calendar and contact lists, enabling more dynamic interactions than what Alexa or Siri currently offer.

What about you? Have you been playing with something related to that topic? I'm excited to hear.

See ya!