lostandfound

I Found All of My Stolen Camera Gear in the Nearest Pawn Shop

Do you ever wake up in the morning and just know that there’s something amiss? On Saturday, June 22nd, I woke up with a knot in my stomach as I realized I had left my camera outside in my truck. I wasn’t positive I’d locked the doors.

Photos Found on USB Stick Found in Frozen Seal Poo

There have been plenty of stories of photos being found on lost cameras over the years, but here's a wild lost-and-found story you definitely haven't heard before. A USB drive has been reunited with its owner after it was found in a frozen slab of seal poo.

I Set Up a Sting Operation and Caught the Thief Who Stole My Camera

Like many professional photographers, my main camera is a bit of a beast. A Fuji X-T2, usually with a big lens, and always with a battery grip on it. It’s a bit big to go traveling with, and although it’s not as big as my Nikon D600 and grip that I used to use, it still warrants the travel/side-arm camera I bought in the D600 days.

The Story of Sean Flynn’s Leica M2

This is a story about a camera, a rather special camera. Every camera has a history, so they say. But it is not all that often that one has such a rich and documented history. One that was thought to be lost but has been found again. This is the story of Sean Flynn’s Leica M2.

The Mysterious Case of the Returning Leica

In November 2016, I was in a transitional part of my life (I still am) and was considering selling my Leica M2 and switching to a digital Ricoh GR. I listed the camera on several Facebook camera trading groups and the Australian/UK Craigslist alternative, Gumtree. Long story short, I was scammed while trying to sell it.

Vietnam Veteran Gets His Camera Back 50 Years After it Was Stolen

Getting a camera back in good condition after it's been stolen always makes for a "feel-good" story, but this particular tale goes above and beyond. Vietnam veteran Leon Hembree was reunited with his Canon 8mm camera a full 50 years after it was swiped from his bag in Vietnam.

I Found My Photo Portfolio That Went Missing for 30 Years

This is a story about my photography portfolio that went missing for 30 years. I made this collection of photographs while working as a photographer at the Goldstream Gazette, a weekly newspaper on Vancouver Island from 1976 to 1978.

SmugMug is Helping Save 200 Million Photos Lost when Picturelife Died

When photo storage site Picturelife shut down, users were left high and dry without a way to access and/or download the images they had stored there. This didn't sit well with SmugMug, who reached out to Picturelife and, today, is helping reunite those photographers with their lost images.

Lost Weather Balloon GoPro Found 2 Years Later with Grand Canyon ‘Money Shot’

Back in 2013, five friends in Arizona decided to capture some photos and video from the edge of space by sending a GoPro up on a weather balloon. The camera made it to 98,000 feet, but the guys lost track of it after it landed out of cell phone tower range. All seemed lost, and the team spent months wondering if they'd ever find the camera.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago: the team got a phone call from a woman who found a strange box with their names on it. In it was the camera and all of the original images.

Camera Drone Found in Lake with Footage of Owner and Crash Into Water

Anne-Marie Valentine was on a camping trip at Folsom Lake in California last month when she spotted what appeared to be a dead seagull at the bottom of the dry lake bed. When she got closer, she realized that it was a camera drone that someone had crashed into the lake before the drought had sucked away water. What's more, footage in the video camera was still intact, and it showed the drone's unfortunate final flight.

This DSLR Spent 2 Years in a Lake… and the Memory Card Survived

The photos on the memory card in a DSLR can survive more than what you might think. This past weekend, a man named David McFadyen was exploring Laguna Lake in San Luis Obispo, California, when he found a Canon Rebel T1i DSLR camera on the dry lake bed.

It turns out the camera had been lost two years ago, and the photographs inside managed to survive all that time at the bottom of a lake.

Photographer Recovers $15K in Stolen Gear Thanks to EXIF Copyright Info

If your camera lets you automatically add copyright EXIF metadata to every photo you take, you should do it: it could help you recover your gear if it ever gets stolen. That's exactly what happened to photographer Jon Grundy: after losing $15,000 in gear, Grundy was able to identify the thief and recover his stolen equipment after seeing his name in the copyright info of online photos.

This Camera Survived Three Months at the Bottom of the Ocean

Underwater photographer John Ng was diving off the coast of the Maldives last month when he noticed something stuck among the rocks and coral reef at the bottom of the ocean. After a recovery and investigation, it turned out to be an underwater camera that had been lost last year -- a camera that was still perfectly functional.

GoPro Survives 17 Months Bouncing Around a Riverbed After Filming Its Final Moments

GoPros exist to take quite a beating... they are action cams after all. However, as much as GoPro might put its products through the wringer to test them and ensure they’re up for anything, it’s unlikely they expect one to survive what the one in the above video did.

The functioning camera managed to survive in a riverbed for 17 months! And not only did it survive, the footage of the camera’s final moments was still safe and sound on the memory card inside.

Photographer Discovers an Old Leica and 20K Slides in Late Grandfather’s Belongings

Photographer John Oliver of Film Foto Forever didn't know his grandfather-in-law, Jackson McIntosh Holliday, was a photographer until it was too late. Jack passed away on October 11th, 2013, and it was only recently, when John's wife and her family were sorting through her grandfather's things, that they found an old Leica IIIC in amazing condition and 20k plus slides of his work.

70-Year-Old WWII Foxhole Photos Turn Out to Be a Hoax

Last week, we and many others ran the story of a rather astounding collection of photographs that were supposedly discovered in a foxhole where the infamous Battle of the Bulge took place.

Allegedly found by U.S. Navy Captain Mark Anderson and accompanying historian Jean Muller, the story goes that the duo found then scanned the images in an old camera, presenting them to the world seventy years after they were captured and left behind by a soldier who had been KIA. But that, it seems, is not the truth.

Soldier’s Camera and Photos from Battle of The Bulge Found in Foxhole 70 Years Later

Update: Turns out this story was a hoax. Head on over to our update and apology to catch up on the latest.

The Battle of the Bulge is known as one of the most deadly and influential battles of WWII. Taking place over the course of five weeks, this surprise attack by the Germans caught allied forces off-guard, causing massive casualties, especially among U.S. Troops.

Among the 89,000 casualties was a soldier named Louis J. Archambeau, a Chicago native who left behind an interesting surprise in a foxhole he had been taking refuge in during the cold weather and rough artillery fire.

Haunting Photographs of Nagasaki Taken One Day After the Atomic Bomb Dropped

This week, 24 incredible, powerful, haunting photographs will be going up on the auction block at Bonhams in New York. These are photographs that are newly-discovered, and many of them have never been seen before as they were taken with a faulty camera and never made it in front of the public eye.

They are photographs of Nagasaki, Japan, taken by celebrated Japanese military photographer Yosuke Yamahata the day after an atomic bomb was dropped on it and Hiroshima.

Over 400 Photos from 1938 Italy, Including One of Hitler, Found on Film Purchased at a Thrift Shop

I have a feeling this is something every photographer does or has done at some point in their life. Walking through a flea market or thrift shop, they look around and see an older camera. Not one they have any interest in purchasing, but one they do have interest in. Why? For what could be inside. They are in the search of film... film that isn’t theirs. They hope to find photographs from a time long gone and possibly forgotten.

I’ve done it myself and I’d put good money down that many of you have as well. Usually the cameras come up empty, and even if they don’t, oftentimes the photographs themselves are nothing special. But every so often someone hits the jackpot, and that was the case recently with Matt Ames.

Watch Andy Warhol Digitally Edit a Photo in 1985, Lost Works Recovered Just this Year

If you thought Photoshop 1.0 was primitive, take a look at the video above. What you’re watching is a short section of film shot at the Amiga launch conference that took place in 1985.

Specifically, you're watching world-renown artist Andy Warhol using his first ever computer to digitally edit a photograph of Debbie Harry by “painting” over it using the Amiga’s graphic program.

Boston Pawn Shop Stops the Potential Sale of a Stolen Nikon D3100

Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

Note to any camera thief who attempts to get rid of the camera at a pawn shop: it might be beneficial to at least know how to turn the thing on. Not only that, but when questioned about where you “found” the camera and when asked to file a missing item report, don’t run off -- I’ve heard it doesn’t help with the whole suspicion factor.