lose your camera?

December 15, 2005 3:41 PM

Do you recognize any of these people?

i found a digital camera. if you know any of the folks in these pictures, have them email me with the following info for the return of their very nice camera: tell me where & when I found it/where it was lost (city and particular circumstance), the size of the memory card, make & model and maybe identify some of the other folks on the card (not pictured) and i'll be happy to ship it home. I just feel bad for whoever lost their family photos. Thanks!

posted by luriete to grab bag (32 comments total)

actually my wife found the camera, not me. but everything else above is correct. i hope we find the owner.
posted by luriete at 3:42 PM on December 15, 2005

If this works, I will have new respect for the power of AskMe.
posted by reverendX at 3:45 PM on December 15, 2005

yeah, me too! well, i had to make at least some effort. i can't think of any other way to do it (already contacted the police lost & found in the place it was found, tried craigslist but just got jerks saying 'hi i could really use that camera thanks').
posted by luriete at 3:48 PM on December 15, 2005

There's a tiny typo in your tag of "found camera" on Flickr.
posted by peep at 3:53 PM on December 15, 2005

You might want to provide some indication of where on the planet you found this camera. I really don't think that you'll be giving away too much by specifying, say, the country. Or, if in the U.S., the state. If you said it was in Wyoming, I might e-mail some friends in Wyoming and check with them. Based on what you've provided, there's no means by which others can spread the word, practically-speaking.
posted by waldo at 3:53 PM on December 15, 2005

USA, New York State. Good idea, thanks.
posted by luriete at 3:54 PM on December 15, 2005

Someone on Flickr already identified the location, and I've emailed the owners of the restaurant. If the date on the image is correct, i may be able to get their names. Neato!
posted by luriete at 4:00 PM on December 15, 2005

How do you plan to verify that the person who says it's their camera is the actual owner?
posted by gaby at 4:24 PM on December 15, 2005

Disregard, I should read the question more thorougly next time... :(
posted by gaby at 4:25 PM on December 15, 2005

It may be possible to extract the model of the camera from the picture metadata - I don't know what it takes to get Photoshop to dump this information. Probably a simple re-save does it, but if I were you I'd ask for another picture of any of the people involved.
posted by abcde at 4:26 PM on December 15, 2005

Or at least a description of someone not pictured, yeah.
posted by abcde at 4:28 PM on December 15, 2005

yeah, the metadata on Flickr contains the camera model
posted by reverendX at 4:29 PM on December 15, 2005

yes, i will want the (slightly weird) location which they most probably lost it in, plus a picture of them sent to me, that's a good idea.
posted by luriete at 4:32 PM on December 15, 2005

Would this be worth posting in a local paper or something? Or on craigslist.

If you find the people it would be cool to hear the story. Keep us posted.
posted by sien at 4:50 PM on December 15, 2005

abcde: Save for web will drop all EXIF headers, which honestly, kind of irks me.
posted by aubilenon at 4:51 PM on December 15, 2005

craigslist doesn't work, far too many people trying to scam the camera off me. tried the local paper, they said they get a gazillion stories like this and weren't interested.
posted by luriete at 4:55 PM on December 15, 2005

Did you try also posting in the NYC Flickr group?
posted by vacapinta at 5:10 PM on December 15, 2005

Hey you found my pictures from 7/22/05 taken with a Kodak z740 zoom!
posted by puke & cry at 6:03 PM on December 15, 2005

I second the Flickr groups suggestion. Join any of the large NYC related groups, and submit one/some of the photos there or post a forum message if the photos are not very group-related. Even if nobody recognizes anyone directly, you'll get some more exposure.
These have a lot of members:

NYC Socials
NYC photobloggers
posted by easternblot at 7:54 PM on December 15, 2005

Don't these people do napkin shout-outs?
posted by Snerd at 8:02 PM on December 15, 2005

Well, it's towards the top of Digg, won't be long now ...
posted by Dag Maggot at 10:58 PM on December 15, 2005

sure, it's not much...but i posted it to my del.icio.us.
posted by nadawi at 11:27 PM on December 15, 2005

The pictures were taken on different dates:

First 2 on 7/19
Next 4 on 7/21
Last 6 on 7/22

The people in pictures 1 and 4 appear on all the dates but never appear in a shot together, so it probably belongs to one of them and the camera is being passed between them to take the photos. You can just make out the side of the face of the lady in picture 4, in picture 1. The eye glasses and haircut match.

Unfortunately they all appear to have been taken at different restaurants in one week on a Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, which implies they are on vacation or visiting some folks who don't work or are off. Given the people in the group I'd say it is a new family spending time with their parents so they can see their new grandchild, but with all the other folks around them there could be a larger event taking place. I really think it belongs to the older couple in #4 since the young family appears together often, and sort of fits with the grandparents meeting their grandchild hypothesis.

I'm not sure how you could swing this, but if you can identify the other restaurants they can try to match names from their credit card slips, which would narrow it down quickly. Perhaps one has a computerized DB that can give you a report of just the names? Last names? They might be more willing to let you "borrow" that. Or the managers could go over it on the phone, that way you wouldn't know the information.

Other ideas: check with churchs in the area (someone might recognize the grandparents) and check with the police. I think their professionals and could be retired but I can't think of how that helps. A long shot: tell the camera manufacturer. Someone may have registered the camera.

Amazing what insomnia can do to a person...
posted by jwells at 5:12 AM on December 16, 2005

So, uh, it's more likely for the person who lost the camera to see your post on ask metafilter and all the pictures on flickr, then email you and ask for the camera back than it is for them to go back to the restaurant and look in their lost-and-found?

Why isn't the camera still in the restaurant's lost-and-found?
posted by billybunny at 6:31 AM on December 16, 2005

^^^ I am guessing the Camera was not found at the restaurant.
posted by TheAnswer at 6:57 AM on December 16, 2005

It was not found at the restaurant, but quite far away from the restaurant, actually. I have taken the pictures of the baby down as so many people on Digg said they would have sued me had I put pictures of their kids down and called me bad names. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.
posted by luriete at 9:16 AM on December 16, 2005

I have to take all the pictures down now. A bunch of people on Digg, where someone posted this, said that they thought I should be used for copyright infringement or something (invasion of privacy? I don't know) and that i was a bad person for putting up private pics online. So I'm taking them down now. Hopefully the restaurant thing comes through.
posted by luriete at 10:26 AM on December 16, 2005

you're not a bad person, luriete! You were just trying to help. I'd've done the same thing.
posted by scody at 10:33 AM on December 16, 2005

Just because some idiots at digg think you should get in trouble doesn't mean you would or should. Chill out a bit; you're just trying to help.
posted by pwb503 at 2:35 PM on December 16, 2005

Keep in mind the members of Digg are mostly retarded assholes.
posted by puke & cry at 10:02 AM on December 17, 2005

This part of the story is much more sad than the missing camera part! (Good luck)
posted by nobody at 7:50 AM on December 18, 2005

people suck. you were just trying to be nice.
posted by nadawi at 9:48 PM on January 18, 2006