How This Pro Photographer Recovered $9k Worth of Stolen Gear

Professional lensman John Heller get $ 9,000 worth of train stolen in Los Angeles . Here ’s how he pose it all back .

Heller , a Getty Images photographer , was on designation at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood when his Nikon D3 and bag of lenses was steal . Like most victims of gadget theft , Heller reported the offence to the police but release himself to the loss . In a last ditch , he entered his tv camera ’s serial number into GadgetTrak’sSerial Search Serviceand turned up an exact match to several picture that had recently been post to Flickr . These photos finally pass Heller and the police to a professional photographer who ’d inadvertently bought the steal gear . The Flickr history even run them to the lensman ’s Facebook profile which had snapshots of the missing lens .

So how does the GadgetTrak hunt study ? inter within each digital photo data file are immense trove EXIF data point which include exposure setting , the case of camera that used to take the photo , and most significantly in this suit , the camera ’s consecutive routine . When you upload your pic to Flickr , or any other photograph - share-out internet site , all of this information goes with it . Searching photo by this data is easy enough unless they ’re obliterate behind a privacy setting . GadgetTrak claims that its search wanderer have locate and index more than 10 million television camera successive numbers . It seems so simple that it ’s difficult to consider Heller ’s the first someone to recover their camera by look for their serial number on Flickr.[GadgetTrakviaBoingBoing ]

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