RV Studio is one person

Eric Wei

I work in data science, shoot film, and repair old cameras. RV Studio is where those meet — small tools for fields I know from the inside.

Background

I trained as an architect and practised as one for several years, then moved into data science. I am studying it now, along with how AI is actually implemented and the ideas it is built on.

Architecture is where the idea behind the studio came from. Every discipline has its own vocabulary, tolerances and instruments, and the software sold to them is usually made by people who have never done the job. So people improvise.

Why I make apps

Film photography was the first field I knew well enough to build for. Filmatic started because I was doing the same exposure arithmetic by hand every time I went out. The pattern is not specific to film — any field with its own instruments has jobs that general software does badly.

Film, and the cameras

I shoot film and develop it myself. The process is a good part of why I do it: mixing the chemistry, holding a temperature, timing each step, and finding out what you got only once the roll is off the reel.

I also collect mid-century cameras, mostly ones sold for parts, and repair them. A shutter that will not fire is usually old lubricant rather than a broken part, and a rangefinder that reads wrong usually needs its cam reset.