Stolen: Where and What

PetaPixel’s DL Cade has a post up about the most stolen camera equipment as tracked by Lenstag. The results are surprising to me – I would have assumed some consumer level camera was the most commonly lost piece of kit, not the high end pieces from Canon that make up the top three.

Digging deeper, the data source – Lenstag – is a company that allows you to record serial numbers in advance and then, if gear goes missing, quickly list them as gone. Who is going to do this? Well, mostly advanced amateurs and professionals (more than 10,000 of them, according to their web site).

So, is the Canon EOS 5D Mark III the most stolen piece of equipment in the world? Or is it the most commonly recorded one? The data is inconclusively (and my statistics expert neighbor Prof. Barry Hollander would probably have a field day with the data), but it’s entertaining.

Regardless, keep track of your stuff – 9% of all gear goes missing on public transportation and, worse, 27% disappears from cars.