Stolen Camera Finder

I had my Canon DSLR body cleaned at the service centre here in Brampton, ON. When I got it back I noticed it felt different--the shutter sound is more thumpy, and etc. I checked the serial number to check if it was really mine and it was. It's all fine but then months later just by some coincidence I saw a photo on Flickr with my e-mail address in the metatags. Some of my photo buddies warned me that Canon is notorious for swapping parts when your cameras are in for service.

Would it be possible to process the images somehow and find the noise profile for every image and match it with existing images?<p>When I found a directory full of images and couldn't remember which camera took them, I noticed that there were a few fuzzy pixels of green and red if I zoomed all the way in that were present in all photos taken by that camera. I took a photo of a white wall in a dark room (to force high ISO) with a couple of my cameras and found the one. Of course I found out about the EXIF serial number and other unique data later on, but it could still be useful on sites that store the original image but strip EXIF.

So if I find a photo I like, I can find all other photos taken by the same camera? Is there potential for stalking here?

I think it could help to add a feature "I've found camera/sd card/other device with photos". Just an anecdotal evidence, but my friend's friend found an iPod with some photos few years ago and couldn't locate the owner. Surely it doesn't happen very often, but if this site gained enough popularity, it could be really helpful.

Good idea, but works most effectively when:<p>(1) Various encode/decode steps along to publishing the photo online don't corrupt EXIF data<p>(2) Thief isn't sophisticated to wipe/disable EXIF data. Many cameras shoot in a proprietary, higher-bit format and give you a fairly obvious wizard option on a desktop tool to include/exclude the EXIF data.<p>(3) Thief will use the camera, not sell it immediately into a second-hand market.<p>(4) Even if your camera is supported, it has to be configured to record EXIF data by both you and the thief. Some proprietary formats are fairly raw and don't always include EXIF-derivable data by default.<p>This will get some adoption because what other option do users have, but it will be interesting to see how many uploads convert to a lost camera being recovered/thief being apprehended. If users had the ability to leave a testimonial when there is some kind of closure, you could derive a metric of success.

Tried it with a photo taken from a camera I had stolen in Peru:<p><i>The 'SAMSUNG TECHWIN CO., LTD. Samsung SL201' does not write serial information in the exif. See the supported cameras page for a list of models that do.</i>

Another neat idea: Allow the user to select their city, the make and model of the camera, and the date it was stolen. Then you can scrape Craigslist from the surrounding area and show possible matches.

What's the database of photos it can search against like? I just tried looking up a photo, the site found the serial number in it but couldn't find any matching photos online. I know the exist, even the exact same photo I was testing with is available on various websites.

Obviously I'm an edge case, but I'm not using a graphical file manager, so I can't use the drag and drop method of providing a file.<p>Have you considered allowing users to specify a file by URL, or the browser's browse mechanism for file input?

It's a shame some smartphone cameras (eg, my old Nexus One) don't tag with full EXIF data, else you'd then have a much larger potential userbase.

For one camera I got: "fail The 'NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D200' does not write serial information in the exif. See the supported cameras page for a list of models that do."<p>For my other camera, a Pentax K20D which is on the supported list I got:<p>"Problem extracting serial number. If possible, use an original image from the camera that has not been edited in any software."<p>The only thing I had done was uploaded the image from the camera via iPhoto. But all the EXIF data was in tact, including the Pentax K20D, the serial #, even the lens I used. So I don't think iPhoto stripped any data.<p>I'm wondering why if Flickr for example can extract all of the EXIF data, even for images not directly from the flash card, why did this happen?

I doubt this will every successfully result in a stolen camera being recovered. But, it is a cool new idea that certainly has other obvious applications such as finding other photos by the same camera.<p>Would it be better rebranded to a different purpose?

So this uses exif data, which as people here have noted can be stripped, but can't you still ID digital cameras from things like sensor noise? I haven't looked at the statistical properties of it, it probably changes over time, only works on at high ISOs, and search would be way more intensive, but I know that my camera has a very predictable noise pattern.

The photo itself is not uploaded to the site for checking. Only a few bytes with the serial and camera model/manufacturer are sent in a HTTP GET to stolencamerafinder.com. This makes it very light in traffic.<p>The site can expand the camera-&#62;owner database by searching photos with valid EXIFs on famous sites and correlating it to the user.

No love for RW2 I guess =( Also, add an upload button, I don't want to drag&#38;drop if my browser is full screen!

Not as drag-and-drop easy, but GadgetTrak is working on something similar: <a href="http://gadgettrak.com/labs/camera/" rel="nofollow">http://gadgettrak.com/labs/camera/</a>

Great idea. But instead of a serial input, it should ask for a photo or Flickr account or so. I don't know my cam's serial, and I can't look it up easily if it's stolen.

This really needs the addition of an "enter a URL" or "upload a photo" interface - drag and drop often does not work! Or does not easily work, anyway.

I haven't gotten this to work once. Cool idea though.

A lot of cameras don't include the Serial Number in the EXIF header. What happens then?

On Chrome, drag-n-dropping from other windows doesn't seem to work (on Windows 7).

Apparently this doesn't work in Firefox. Too bad.

Seems like a neat idea for a search engine, but I tried with photos from 6 different cameras and none of them stored the serial number in exif. I wonder how many models this is actually useful for.

The project is a great proof of concept, the chances this will get someone's stolen camera back is pretty slim. We have a similar project, but it searches for the data using existing search engine data. Only about 25% of cameras will embed the serial number, then when uploaded only a few sites will retain the EXIF data, or provide it through meta data. A few that keep the EXIF data or provide it in meta data include:<p>Flickr.com DeviantArt.com SmugMug.com Picasa.com<p>Some of these sites strip out some tags. Some manufacturers have custom EXIF tags like Nikon which may store the serial in a "Serial Number" tag or a tag called "0x00D".

Terrible idea. EXIF data is not reliable. You can make it say anything you want.