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.
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 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.
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.
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.
While taking her usual walk along the water on Cardiff State Beach, California resident Marian Rogers came across a waterproof camera, still intact, and whose memory card still held the images of what appears to be newlyweds. A camera she is trying her best to reunite with its former owners.
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.
Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
Maybe we don't give memory cards enough credit, because for all of the stories of corrupt files and irretrievable photographs, we have some astounding stories of memory cards performing above and beyond what anybody thinks they could possibly do.
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.
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.
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.
Stolen gear registration and recovery service Lenstag reached a major milestone last week when they successfully recovered and returned a stolen lens to its rightful owner!
News in the photo world isn't always uplifting -- what with all the layoffs and copyright scandals -- but once in a while you stumble onto one of those 'renew your faith in humanity' stories that just make you smile.
That's the uplifting story told by Imaging Resource Editor-in-Chief Dave Etchells, who recently lost $7,000 on a bullet train in Japan, only to have it found and returned to him with nary a piece missing.
We have a category called "Finds" here at PetaPixel, and never does it apply more literally than when we chance upon one of those long-lost-camera-shows-up-x-years-later-with-photos-still-intact stories. Today we have one of those astounding stories for you, featuring a camera lost three years ago that was fished out of Lake Tahoe just last week.
In the Spring of 1980, just a few weeks before the infamous Mount St. Helens eruption that would take his life along with 56 others, photojournalist Reid Blackburn captured the volcano as it looked before it exploded.
"Impossible" stories don't seem to be all that impossible where cameras are concerned. For example, you might remember the Canon compact that found its way back to its owner after drifting 6,200 miles across the ocean to Taiwan.
Today's impossible story isn't quite so international, but no less amazing. After losing $1,300 worth of camera equipment to an alligator at the Everglades Alligator Farm eight months ago, another alligator was kind enough to return amateur wildlife photographer Mario Aldecoa's gear to him last week.
Yep, it happened. It really did...
I just recently finished a whirlwind Euro-trip traveling with my sisters. The itinerary was Germany (where I am currently living as a soldier with the incredible fortune to be stationed there) to London to Dublin to Paris to Barcelona and back to Germany.
Mark Kologi is known by many simply as "The Photo Man," and over the years he has bought, sorted and sold over three million forgotten personal photos. It's his passion, and the connection he has forged with his photos and the people who buy them shows in this short documentary by Ben Kitnick.
Harry and Edna Grossmann's stories ended in 1986 and 1983, respectively. A long-time married couple, they never had kids, and instead chose a life of travel and photography. But none of this was known to most of the world until 30 old boxes containing 1,100 slides of their travels made their way into Chicago-based photographer Jeff Phillips' hands.
We won't deny it: we love a good lost and found story. When a camera goes drifting out to sea or is lost in an earthquake, only to turn up months or even years later with the photos still intact, we can't help but smile and share the story.
In this case, kitesurfer Jens Knof lost his friend's brand new GoPro Hero in February of 2011. When a spearfisherman found it two and a half months later just hanging out at the bottom of the reef, Knof was both relieved and amazed.
Photographer Nick Wesson experienced the power of the Internet first hand this past weekend after he managed to track down the subject of a photo he found in a thrift store camera -- in a matter of hours.
In 2007, Lindsay Scallan of Newnan, Georgia took her camera -- complete with underwater housing -- on a trip to Hawaii. It was on that trip, during a nighttime scuba dive in Kaanapali, that Scallan lost her camera to the deep blue. Understandably, she didn't expect she would ever see it again.
But as we've seen in the past, the rule is "never say never" when it comes to finding long-lost photographs. Six years later, the Canon Powershot washed up 6,200 miles away on the beaches of Taiwan where a China Airlines employee picked it up, and began searching for the owner.
A couple were visiting a vista point near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco this past Valentine's Day when they came across a black camera bag that had apparently been misplaced. After the owner didn't turn up to recover it, they looked inside and found a wallet with Chinese currency, credit cards, an "expensive-looking" camera and lens... and $11,000 in cash.
There are only a few (two, maybe three) ground-level photographs of the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing in existence, and one of the original prints just surfaced in the archives at Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima city.
A Canadian woman named Karen Gwillim was driving through the village of Craven, Saskatchewan back in September when she came across a cormorant (perhaps like the one above) standing in the middle of the road. Seeing that it was struggling, Gwillim got out of her car to take a closer look, and found that there was a silver digital camera hanging from the bird's neck. After taking the camera off -- or stealing the camera from the bird, depending on how you look at it -- Gwillim took the gear home to investigate.
A crazy story of photo survival has emerged over in New Zealand. Apparently a couple had lost their camera during the Christchurch earthquake last February. They found the demolished camera yesterday, 18 months after it got buried in silt, and were overjoyed to find that their precious photos were still readable.
Earlier this month, we shared the crazy story of a DSLR that sat at the bottom of a creek for three years before being returned to its owner, thanks to the fact that the memory card was still readable. In case you were wondering what the camera looked like after chillin' in such an unfriendly environment, here are some photographs of it sent to us by owner Michael Comeau.
How long can photos stay alive inside a Canon Rebel DSLR sitting at the bottom of a muddy creek? A crazy new lost-and-found story suggests that the answer is at least 3 years.
The story, first reported by John Alexander over at PostStar, is fit for a Sherlock Holmes short story.
A photographer's worst nightmare happened to YouTube filmmaker Casey Neistat recently. After taking a taxi after a long 18-hour work day and flight, Neistat accidentally forgot all of his luggage -- and $13,238.86 worth of camera gear -- in the back of a New York City taxi cab. Among the equipment lost was a Canon 5D Mark III kit ($4300), a 24-70mm lens ($1600), and about $550 worth of memory cards -- equipment necessary for Neistat to make a living.
The latest photo to go viral on the web is a photo about photos. Lost photos, that is. Earlier …