Here’s another public service announcement for those of you who travel often (see our warning on zippered bags): the safes in hotel rooms may not be as secure as you think. YouTube user skyrangerpro recently discovered that the safe in his room could be opened with “000000″ regardless of what passcode he chose. This is presumably the “master password” the hotel uses when you’ve forgotten the one you’ve chosen, but the fact that some hotels leave this on factory default settings is cause for concern.
The next time you think about leaving some pricey camera gear in a hotel safe, makes sure all zeros isn’t a working passcode.
Earlier this year we saw the launch of two search engines — Stolen Camera Finder and GadgetTrak Serial Search — that help find stolen cameras by searching photos on the web for the serial numbers. The idea is neat, but no one knew whether it would actually help recover stolen gear or not. Turns out it does work. Read more…
On Saturday, the Leica store in Moscow was targeted by two masked men who used a sledgehammer to break through the door and shatter all the windows. Apparently the thieves didn’t know too much about Leica gear: they stole a $300 flash unit but left a $23,000 Leica S2 medium format camera sitting on the shelf. Leica has published a list of stolen items and their serial numbers here, and is asking customers to compare serial numbers when buying gear from unauthorized sources.
YouTube user opica1983 was in Cannes, France recording some footage at night with his GoPro camera when a seagull suddenly strolled over to it, grabbed it in its beak, and flew off. Luckily he was able to find the camera after scaling a castle wall, and uploaded the footage to give us a glimpse into what it looks like to be stolen by a seagull. Now there’s a perspective you don’t see every day.
In mid-2010, Time Magazine showed off a demonstration of a slick tablet app they were making in collaboration with The Wonderfactory. As it became widely shared across the web, HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs started receiving messages from fans who spotted his work in the video demo. Problem was, he had never given the magazine or the agency permission to use his work. Read more…
The Stolen Camera Finder is a new search engine developed over the past two years by programmer Matt Burns. His idea is to search the web for photographs that have a stolen camera’s serial number embedded in the EXIF information. It uses two web crawlers — the first is a standard one that accesses Flickr’s API, while the second is a Google Chrome browser plugin that silently runs in the background and peeks at the serial numbers of images on any webpage viewed. These serial numbers and URLs are stored in a database, and if you’d like to volunteer your browsing for this you can download the Chrome plugin here.
Last month we reported that a Flickr photographer had found his photograph of a car being used as a Gap clothing design without his permission. It now appears that appropriating images from the web wasn’t limited to that design, nor just the Gap brand — Old Navy, another brand owned by Gap, is now being accused of stealing a car photograph as well. A photographer was strolling around in an Old Navy store in El Centro, California when he came across a shirt that he just couldn’t stop staring at. It featured a Land Cruiser that look remarkably similar to one he had photographed before. Read more…
Last Friday the art collective THIS had a gallery opening during which a patron asked to use the restroom shortly before closing time. Turns out it wasn’t just to relieve themselves — the person brazenly snatched a one-of-a-kind Polaroid photograph of Dennis Hopper taken by Jason Lee off the wall and walked off with it. Now Lee is personally offering a $25,000 reward for the return of the photograph. Read more…
Think your camera gear is safe in your zippered bag just because you have have sliders locked up? Think again. This video shows how easy it is to break into a zippered bag without leaving a trace.
Yet another reason you should try and keep your gear in sight at all times.
