How many members here on RFF have been robbed of their camera?

My car got broken into quite a few times in NYC even for the spare change I kept handy for tolls. A Nikon FA was stolen out of the glove box when we parked for dinner.
 
Home burglary. Long ago. I lost my entire 4x5 outfit (Wista 45SP, several lenses, etc.) and a Haliburton case with two Nikon F bodies and several Nikkor lenses). They didn't take the bag with the Leica gear, however. Lucky me.
 
Once someone tried to snatch my EOS-5 off my shoulders. I was on the underground tube and he tried to make a swift exit when the doors were closing. I manage to hold on the camera and he left without it.
 
Guth said:
I'm very sorry to learn of this and hope that your wife wasn't injured too seriously. While the stories of theft are very unfortunate, thus far it seems that you (and your wife) are the only one to have experienced a robbery. I wonder how it was they overlooked the camera, was it on your person under a jacket or something like that?
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Yeah I slipped the camera in my inside jacket pocket. They tried to trap us in an empty kiosk at knife point, but we fell out of that into the street in plain view. Therefore, they didn’t have a lot of time to execute their plan and my wife was smart enough to hand over her bag quickly even after her head hit the ground. If they had trapped us, they would have gotten everything and it could have been worse. This was in 2017. I brought the X70 because it was my “cheap” camera but electronic cost double what they are in the USA in Argentina. Also, I was dressed down for me, but it still looked too clean and gringo. Nobody walks around flaunting anything and people seem to dress down on purpose. Of course this was not a great neighborhood. We got off the bus a stop too early. It’s a lot different than Chile where it’s just snatch and run type of deals. I’ve photographed here extensively and have been robbed (pickpocket) of my cellphone in the train, but nothing violent. A bit of good news is that they caught one of the guys and he went to jail for 8 years (reduced to 4). We are over it, but it’s changed the way we travel. Thankfully I’m not really into travel photography either since I like returning to the same places over and over. My serious photography is done where I live always. I am completely ok with traveling without a camera if a place isn’t safe enough.
 
OK, since it seems close calls are allowed...

I had no sooner emerged from the central train station in Rome (Roma Termini) when an older lady confronted / distracted me.
What I didn't realize was there was another woman, younger, behind me who snatched my shoulder camera bag and ran off.

Fortunately, I was able to chase her down and retrieve it.
I had been warned about that area but still managed to get heisted (temporarily) during the first minute on the street!
 
Freakscene said:
In Kosovo in 1999 a Serbian irregular pointed a Zastava M70 (a Yugoslavian AKM copy) at me from about 4 feet away and indicated I should give him my 2Nikon F90x cameras with 35-70 and 80-200 lenses. I am 174cm and at the time might have been 70kg. This guy was 190 cm and 100kg easily. A really big guy. I put my hands up and leaned over acting like I was going to give them to him. As he stepped forward I headbutted him hard enough to concuss myself. He fell and dropped the Zastava, which I picked up. I assume he is still running. I got a snap of him as he ran away. It was a really stupid thing to do, but I did go there to see some serious action.

In modern wars there is often a ‘grey zone’ between civilian and military control areas where rule of force is the only control. Awful.

Marty
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Holy ****! Is your avatar photo from the same incident?
 
Stolen

Stolen

I had a Canon 7 + Nikkor 50/2 stolen out of my car at a parking garage at a hospital. I think the thieves were recording my lock on some kind of devise and opened my door. I bought another that had a cloth shutter instead of the metal shutter that was all wrinkled on the stolen one. :bang:
 
andyturk said:
Holy ****! Is your avatar photo from the same incident?
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No. But I can only assume I would have had a facial expression I’d like to have seen. I’ve got the shakes just having written about it. I had not thought about it for a while.

Marty
 
Only robbed, at gunpoint, once. Early 70’s on a IC station in Chicago durning a quiet part of the afternoon. Had my camera, a Miranda, slung over my shoulder but all they wanted was my wallet. The grabbed the money out of the wallet, dropped the wallet and ran. I had just returned from the Museum of Science and Industry so it was the stop closest to that location.
 
I have never had any photographic equipment stolen but I did lose a Nikon F3 and a 50mm 1.4 lens when I fell into a backyard pool at a party. Ah, the good old days of being young and dumb....
 
Twice: first an inexpensive Kodak P&S, stolen when someone picked up my back pack at a service station where I stopped to put air in my bicycle tires. I leaned my bag on the wall and in seconds it was gone.

Second: the replacement for that first Kodak P&S (a gift from a very good friend, who knew a slew of pics from a trip were gone with that first camera), when thieves broke into my car in Guatemala and stole that camera and the spare tire. That car trunk was a joke; it was broken into so many times I even thought about leaving poisoned food in there (yes, very dark thoughts). You probably could get it open with a clothes pin...

After that I learned and I never leave my stuff unattended. I'll go into restaurants and supermarkets with a camera across my chest but I don't care.
 
So far, I have avoided this situation. But, my worry is not so much the physical hand-to-hand confrontation if they initiated aggression and I needed to defend myself (I'm a 2-Dan in Okinawan Karate-Do and still practicing), but rather, losing my situational awareness when out shooting.

I get so absorbed at times while out shooting that I shut out everything else. My awareness gets tunneled into the viewfinder and I lose my peripheral vision, awareness of social cues/body language, and that sort of six-sense where you feel something is not right.

Although, I will say if I was faced dealing with a knife, gun, or sharp object, that's another matter, and not worth getting hurt or killed over. But you're still at their mercy...

I'm more careful now when out shooting and try to take in what's happening around me before raising the camera.
 
Leica0Series said:
Not on my person, but in college I was working for the school newspaper and a photo colleague, who was an addict, stole my brand-new black Nikon FM-2 and a couple of lenses and sold them for drugs. I got insurance money, bought a friend's chrome FM-2 and shot with that for about the next decade.

For years I had plans to show up at the thief's door one night, ring the doorbell and proceed to beat him with a baseball bat, but never did and now I've forgotten his name. May have to go through my old yearbooks. ...
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That's the spirit! Revenge is a dish best served stone cold. But better that it's done without your direct involvement. Perhaps a call to the local PD that his house is a crack den? ;) Then again, he might not even be alive any more, taken by the very addiction that prompted him to steal your gear. Now that's justice.
 
Burglery

Burglery

I've had my home burgled a couple of times. The first time, he took my large collection of Nikon F lenses and an FM2 (I( think). Being a lawyer and knowing that a police report would accomplish nothing, and having recently inventoried all of my photo gear, I prepared a detail list of all items stolen with serial numbers and mailed it to all of the photo shops and pawn shops in the area, on a Friday. On Monday I got a call from a photo shop almost out of area.confirming they had my stuff. I told them to call their city police. Five months later I got my stuff back from their police. The shop had the guy's license copied and his car license. He was on parole at the time following more than 10 years of house breaking. Lost parole and had 2 years added to his sentence. I put steel security doors on the house. The second time, the security door was literally torn out of thel studs. I lost a Fuji GS645 (just rebuilt, grrh), a Pentax 67II with two lenses and a spot meter - gone forever. I had the security door reinstalled with lag bolts into the house frame and studs, and a new metal plate to replace the jam plate normally used. No one is coming through that door who isn't invited. Thereafter, had one more attempt, no entry but left crowbar marks in the back (steel) door. And I live in a nice part of town!
 
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