Documentary filmmaker Eli Steele says that about $30,000 of gear was stolen out of his rental car in San Francisco this week, and adds that the local police were not able to help as they had been "defanged."
The Camera Store (TCS), one of the most popular camera, lens, and photography equipment retailers in western Canada, suffered a break-in this morning, May 3, and over $30,000 worth of Sony, Nikon, and DJI equipment was stolen.
Midwest Photo has been burglarized in a big way for a second time in five years. Surveillance video caught a truck crashing into the store as the opening act to the crime.
Thieves broke into a studio in Los Angeles this past weekend and, after spending just 6 minutes inside, made off with well over $100,000 in camera gear.
A popular camera store in the UK was targeted this week by burglars who made off with over $200,000 in Leica cameras and lenses.
The priceyness and portability of photo gear makes camera rental and retail outlets a popular target of burglars, and last week yet another big name in the industry was looted. The camera store Midwest Photo in Columbus, Ohio, was broken into on March 15th, and a huge number of items were stolen.
We seem to be hearing more and more stories of camera gear offices being broken into and plundered. Late last year it was $2 million in gear from three businesses in California. Last month it was $586,000 from LensProToGo. Now the latest is the Florida-based gear rental shop, The LensPal.
In some gut-wrenching news shared by Leica Rumors this morning, a sponsor of theirs, Red Dot Cameras, has had approximately $62,000 in gear stolen from their shop overnight.