If you’ve found your way to this post through a Google search, some asshole has probably just stolen your camera. My sincere condolences. The good news is there are numerous ways to help you recover your gear! How do I know this? I’m sorry to say, through my own excruciating experience. I recently had a Nikon D700 and an attached 80-200mm f/2.8 lens stolen – seemingly during the millisecond or so my eyes closed as I blinked – from a table I was seated at in the lobby of the Long Beach Convention Center. Fortunately, my insurance didn’t have a clause excluding blinking, so I was covered. I was cheap with my insurance, thinking nothing would ever actually happen, so that still left me with a $1,000 deductible to pay. But that’s better than the $3,000+ replacement costs! It’s also given me a sense of renewed vigilance when it comes to protecting my assets. Anyway, I’m sorry your gear was taken. When it happened to me I was looking for a consolidated resource on what to do, but couldn’t find anything. So, after research and asking around for advice, I thought I’d write my own. What’s the picture above have to do with this post? Nothing really, other than, like the thief who took my gear, I don’t know this person’s identity.
What I’ve learned about how to recover lost or stolen camera equipment:
Disclaimer! Unfortunately, none of this so far has resulted in my gear being returned, but I have heard success stories. Should my gear turn up I’ll be sure to update this post, noting which method did the trick. In the meantime, hopefully you’ll find this helpful in the event of stolen or lost gear. If you have anything to add to this or have had one of these methods work for you, please leave a comment below!
First, the basics. These should be no-brainers!
- Buy insurance – One way to get started with this is to consult some of the numerous trade organizations to see if they offer discounts to their members. The ASMP, NPPA, PPA, and APA come to mind. Insurance providers that come to mind include Travelers (what I currently use) and TCP. I’m sure you’ll find countless more options if you consult the aforementioned organizations.
- Write down your serial numbers – This is very important! Your serial numbers are more than just the numbers printed on the outside of your gear. With digital bodies, at least, they are the equivalent to your camera’s DNA code or footprint. Each photo you take is embedded with this number in its EXIF data. Having a copy of the number will prove more valuable than you realize. If you have insurance they will always have a copy on file. I also had a copy of my policy on my laptop and was able to find the serial numbers immediately when I called the police.
- Report to the police – file a report and be sure to give them your serial numbers. Pawn shops, by law, are required to cross-check the serial numbers of any camera equipment they are going to purchase. If you’ve reported to the police, your gear’s in the database. Assuming your camera finds its way to an honest pawn shop proprietor you might get your gear back! And in the event that there is a large bust (I’ve heard of this happening often with bicycle thefts in particular), they will know who the camera belongs to and should be able to get it back to you.
- Report to local security, if there is any – In my case, I reported it to the Long Beach Convention Center’s “ace” security team, but they were about as useful as an inflatable dartboard. They were not only very difficult to find, but once found took several hours to get around to even checking the security tapes. Then it turned out that the lone, far off camera that could potentially have seen something didn’t happen to be working that day. Add to this, that when I asked the woman who was “helping” me if there was a lost and found she told me that given the value of the gear she doubted that anyone would return it to the lost and found. I found this to be a bit cynical, telling her that I would think about 90 percent of the population, if they found a camera laying on a table, would return it to lost and found. She shrugged. I’m not going to go as far as saying anything accusatory about the possibility of their collusion with local thieves. I’m sure they deal with lots of theft and lost item complaints given the amount of traffic that comes through their doors. Nevertheless, they suck.*
Other important measures
- Visit pawn shops – This was suggested to me, but I didn’t bother given my location. How many pawn shops must exist in Los Angeles County? If you’re in a smaller area, however, this might turn up something, either by spotting your gear or at least alerting the broker of the make and model of your gear.
- Report to manufacturer – In my case, Nikon. I’m not having luck finding a place to report online, but as an NPS member I sent the info to them and they added it to their own registry. No luck with Canon either, but perhaps contact Canon Professional Services. I haven’t looked for other manufacturers, but it’s worth contacting their customer support to see.
- Report to one or all of these listing services – http://www.stolen-property.com/report-stolen-camera.php; http://photo.net/neighbor/registry/; http://www.stolen-property.com I have no idea if anyone ever checks against them, but they are out there and it’s simple to do, so why not?
Online tracking services – Both of the services below work to find your digital camera by scanning the popular photo sharing sites such as Flickr for your camera’s EXIF data. By simply uploading a photo you took with your missing camera, it reads the EXIF data – including the serial number – and starts a search. Reading your EXIF data in Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture or PhotoMechanic is also a good way to find your body’s serial number if you for some reason failed to record it elsewhere. It won’t tell you the numbers for your lenses or flashes though, so it’s still necessary to write them down! My only concern for this method – and it’s not much of a concern – is that by the time a photo gets posted on one of these sites your gear is probably owned by some unsuspecting person who thought they got a great deal on Craigslist or eBay, and by retrieving the gear you are just transferring the victimhood from you to them. Tough shit though, really. Buyer beware when it comes to purchasing through those sites. And perhaps they’ll know exactly who they bought the gear from and can help nab the thief. However, this is a good reason for anyone buying used gear to check against the above databases before handing over the cash.
- Stolen Camera Finder – FREE! But limited. Stolen Camera Finder will allow you to start a search for free, but provides limited results. More extensive results are of course available for a fee.
- Camera Trace – For $10, Camera Trace will regularly scan photo sharing sites and will email you if there’s a match. Very easy!
Regularly scan eBay and Craigslist
Scanning Craigslist takes discipline and you don’t know if your camera will go up for sale this week or in three months, if ever. But it’s worth looking. eBay makes it easier by allowing you to set up a saved search and receive a daily email with new results for your search. Then you can scan the results in your inbox and move on if nothing stands out. The person who suggested this to me says he recovered tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear for a former employer this way!
What to do if you discover your stolen gear on eBay or Craiglist:
I honestly have no idea. But according to a post about eBay here:
If you have reason to believe that someone is selling stolen items on eBay or if someone sold you a stolen item, here’s what you need to do:
1. Get the item number and the seller’s user ID.
2. Contact the police and explain the situation. You can find local law enforcement officers on the USACops website.
3. Give the item number and the seller’s user ID to the officers assigned to the case.
4. Tell the officers to email us at stopfraud@ebay.com with the following information (note that only law enforcement officers should contact eBay):
• Name
• Title
• Organization
• Phone number
• Email
• Address
• Case number
• eBay item number
• eBay seller’s user ID
• Summary of the situation
Considering in that post it says email us at stop fraud@ebay.com, I’m guessing that either the source is an eBay employee, or he/she copied it directly from eBay. You can also go to this page to get started.
For Craigslist, an article posted on ABC has this advice:
1. Once your items have been stolen, check Craigslist early and often. Stay on the case. Some items appear with hours, others may take days, months, even years .
2. DO NOT try to buy back your stuff. Involve law enforcement if you think you have found your stolen items on Craigslist.
There are several more steps actually, so go to the article if this applies to you.
Finally, though I’m sure I haven’t exhausted the options, join a Yahoo or LinkedIn group or similar message board dedicated to photography, or your specific brand of camera, and report your loss there! It didn’t turn up my gear, but numerous people chimed in, giving me many of the ideas listed above. Try everything reasonable, I say. You never know which method will do the trick.
That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Good luck recovering your gear and please do comment if you have anything to add.
-dz
*I’ve put this at the bottom since it’s a tangent, but this reminds me of an incident I had with IKEA in Chicago years ago in which the customer service sucked, but security actually came through. Just to say that sometimes security can be very helpful. It’s also a good story and I have nowhere else to put it, so here goes. At the time I was working for a newspaper downstate in Peoria and had made the 2 1/2 hour drive north to purchase some furnishings for my new pad. After returning home from the day-long excursion, I realized that a large area rug that I had purchased hadn’t made it from the cash register to the car. The next day I called customer service and told them what had happened – that I had likely left the rug at the register after paying for it – to which they replied that I was on my own. They weren’t responsible for items once purchased. I asked if he could check last nights cameras to see if there was footage of me at the time printed on my receipt. He said he couldn’t. Frustrated, I decided to take a different approach. While on the line with the same guy I said, okay, I’d like to report a theft of my property while I was in your store last night. Can I please speak with security? At this point he had no choice but to connect me to security. I told them that I had purchased a rug the night before and that someone might have taken it. They gladly checked the tapes and got back to me that day that, in fact, I had left the rug at the register and rather than do anything about it, the cashier had it restocked. I found that odd, but wasn’t sure what his options really were without my contact info. He was able to arrange for my transaction to be refunded, however, and all was well, other than the fact that I still needed to buy a rug. I guess it just goes to show you that you sometimes have to try things from many angles before you find the one that works. It also helps prove that I have a history of misplacing my shit and that being insured is a very good idea for me. Not that I misplaced the camera! I couldn’t have, as the cards from that camera were still with me when I got up from the table. (In case my insurance adjuster is reading this).