theft

Camera equipment has long been attractive to the eyes of thieves. After all, it's generally portable, pricey, and a piece of cake to sell through channels such as Craigslist. In Northern California, robbers have begun targeting photojournalists at gunpoint in order to snatch their gear.

Developer Trevor Sehrer, a Google engineer by day, has been working on a website that aims to help combat the theft of photography gear. It's called Lenstag, and is an online equipment registry that makes it easier to report and track stolen cameras and lenses.

Back in 2011, the BBC show The Real Hustle shared how easy it is for thieves to quickly and quietly steal an expensive lens off your camera -- even when your gear is hanging around your neck. If you didn't believe it then, check out the video above. It reportedly shows a photographer having his lens stolen by a group of robbers over in Russia.

In case you don't know it, cameras and lenses are prime theft targets. You may never think it's going to happen to you, but almost every day I hear from someone who is missing thousands of dollars worth of gear with no hope of getting it back.

My gear rental company has lots of experience with preventing theft and recovering stolen items. I'm not going to give specifics about all the exact measures we take; that would be like leaving a blueprint for those who want to steal our gear. But we've learned a lot and have at least tried everything I'm going to talk about today.

Having your laptop and photographs stolen usually isn't a good thing, but for photographer Melanie Willhide, it actually helped her career move forward.

Apparently robbers in Northern California are starting to learn that photojournalists typically shoot with pretty expensive gear. The …

When photographer Jess T. Dugan picked up her luggage after a flight from Chicago to Boston on December 18th, something didn't feel quite right. It felt a bit lighter than it should have. She opened it up, and, lo and behold, several thousand dollars of camera equipment was missing -- oops.

A number of years ago, a TSA agent named Pythias Brown accidentally left a camera out of some luggage he was screening. Not wanting to be reprimanded for his mistake, he decided to avoid any problems by secretly taking the camera home. This event opened his eyes to how easy it was to pocket passengers' belongings, and he began to steal more and more items in increasingly brazen thefts.

With the advent of Internet-connectivity and apps in cameraphones and digital cameras, images can now be shared with others in ways never before seen in the history of photography. Unfortunately, not all of the ways are positive. Some are downright creepy.

Take PlaceRaider, for example. It's a malicious Android app that hijacks your smartphone's camera, secretly takes photos of your life, and uses those images to reconstruct 3D virtual spaces of private locations.

You've probably heard people say that you should keep your camera gear with you at all times when flying, as there are multiple points in the travel process at which your valuable equipment could get stolen or damaged. In case you're not convinced, check out the video above showing an investigative report that ABC News recently did.

To test airports that have a history of theft, Brian Ross of ABC's The Blotter left 10 iPads inside the plastic bins at security checkpoints. At 9 out of 10 airports, the screeners followed protocol and immediately contacted the owner using the contact info prominently displayed on the iPad. In the 10th case, an agent was filmed taking the iPad out of the bin before it vanished.

If you want to protect your pricey camera gear from burglars, one of the safest places in your house (besides a safe, of course) is one that might not be very obvious to you: your kid's room. The Readers Digest published a simple slideshow containing home-proofing tips gleaned from the minds of convicted burglars. One interesting tip is that burglars generally don't go into children's rooms when hunting for valuables to steal.

For people looking to protect their belongings from theft in public places, there are bag alarms out there that can alert them (and everyone around them) if someone tries to pick up their stuff. DIY hacker Kip Kedersha (kipkay on YouTube) recently came up with a clever way to make one of these alarms for just $2.

There’s some shady business going on at CES 2012 in Vegas. Sigma has announced that one of the lenses …

If you're ever sitting down in a public place with your camera bag, having it close by isn't enough to protect it from theft -- you need to make sure it can't be easily snatched. Tom Bird of the UK learned this the hard way: he was at a pub recently when his camera bag suddenly disappeared. It's contents? Just thousands of dollars worth of gear including a Canon 5D Mark II, a 24-70mm f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.2, a 16-35mm f/2.8 and a laptop.

The next time you’re walking around with a DSLR around your neck and a stranger asks you for directions, …

Here’s another public service announcement for those of you who travel often (see our warning on zippered …

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.

This comment posted (and deleted) by Reddit user WonkoTheLucid shows why photographers need …

Fashion photographer David LaChapelle is launching a lawsuit against Rihanna over the controversial music video for her song S&M. LaChapelle alleges that "the music video is directly derived from and substantially similar to the LaChapelle works" and that it copied the "composition, total concept, feel, tone, mood, theme, colors, props, settings, decors, wardrobe and lighting" of eight of his photographs.

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.

Flickr user Chris Devers recently found that one of his photographs had been used by The Gap as a design for children's clothes (here and here). The photo itself was published under a Creative Commons license requiring attribution, non-commercial use, and no derivative works -- usage conditions that were completely ignored.

Think your camera gear is safe in your zippered bag just because you have have sliders locked up? Think …

The Lens Lock is the latest product in the GearGuard gear locking system by Gary Fong (maker of the well known LightSphere). It attaches to the back of a lens like an ordinary rear lens cap, but can be secured and locked using a cable/lock combo. This allows you to lock the gear down when not in use (like you would do with a bike) or lock it together with other gear in your bag, preventing individual items from being stolen from your bag.

This is probably the strangest story you'll read today. When Neil Berrett quit his job in 2009, he sent his boss a kindly written resignation letter written on a cake. The photo of Berrett and his cake become widely circulated, and received hundreds of thousands of views.

Acclaimed photographer Harry Benson was recently flipping through the New York Times when …