Stolen camera gear

Phil Hammond

Phil Hammond

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Phil
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Hi guys, I wonder if anyone can help me?

My house got burgled 3 nights ago (Thurs) and I had my entire camera bag, laptop, and external hard drive stolen. I had spent about 3 hours backing up all my pictures and organising them that very afternoon only to lose the entire lot a few hours later.

I remember reading once that people had actually managed to recover or at least identify their camera being used by someone else uploading photos to the net because the exif data had been logged as stolen or something similar.

Does anyone know if this is viable? I mean as far as I'm concerned it's gone and I'll probably never see it again but id love to at least see if something could be done. I don't even care about the camera or lenses as I'm hoping the house insurance will cover them, but the hard drive had all my baby pictures on etc so if there was a way of this method linking people to stolen goods I'd love to give it a shot.

The camera gear they took was;

Canon 5DmkII
24-70L
580EXII
Sigma 85mm f1.4
Plus various filters, memory cards etc...

Any ideas or pointers in the right direction will be greatly appreciated!!
 
Sorry to hear about that, must be a bloody awful feeling. I also remember seeing a thread about what you are talking about. A guy had bought a stolen camera and was tracked from the photos he was uploading, I'm sure someone will know where it is.

Best of luck.
 
Also I would suggest checking ebay, stolen gear is sold through the site, local cash convertor type shops should be checked as well, again stolen gear can turn up at them.
 
iancandler said:
Also I would suggest checking ebay, stolen gear is sold through the site, local cash convertor type shops should be checked as well, again stolen gear can turn up at them.
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My brother had his bike stolen n checked ebay and it was on there x
 
If you have serial numbers of any of the kit register it with the police and canon sigma etc - in case it turns up as a repair/warrenty etc .
 
Bad news, I can't imagine how I'd feel. In case you didn't know; you should be able to view the serial numbers of body and lens(es) in the full exif of your images - at least I know that's the case with adobe bridge.

Good luck, I hope you get your images back.
 
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so sorry to hear that ... I really hope you get your images back at the very least
 
Flash In The Pan said:
Here you go.....

http://www.stolencamerafinder.com/

Hope it helps
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, I shall register with them and see what happens. I'm about to head into the local town now and check the CEX & Cash Converter stores although I'm not the slightest bit hopeful!

Such scumbags. They've literally stolen my hobby from me - my ability to take, edit, and store photo's. Gone in a flash!
But like I say it's the hard drive that hurts the most, as I'm sure it would be for all of you too.

I was speaking to a friend yesterday who told me his hard drive is in his loft and he wirelessly transfers his files from his laptop straight into that without ever having to go up there, and it's pretty much guaranteed to be left in the event of a burglary, so this is something I'll be looking straight into too.

Thanks again everyone!
 
I know it won't remove the fact that it's happened; but I hope you can get back your camera in the first instance, and if not then I hope you can claim off insurance.

Best of luck, and I understand fully what a horrible ordeal it is to have a personal posession stolen, there truelly are some sickening people about.
 
I just wanted to say best wishes Phil, and I hope that there's a happy outcome somehow.

The HDD in the loft is a good idea and something that I hadn't thought of. Through carelessness I lost some pictures some time ago but I was at least able to download some small file versions from Photobucket. There will no doubt be better ways of cloud/internet backup that could be an option.
 
I hope you manage to get it all back and the hard-drive too. Must be a horrible feeling. :(
 
i once googled the serial number from my D2Xs & the search picked the number out of my exif on some Flickr uploads.
obviously you'd need whoever ends up with the camera to post exif intact shots on a searchable site online which may take a while but it could see you reunited with the body at least :shrug:
 
I know this is no help, but hope you get your items back.
 
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