How to find photos taken with a lost camera

If you lose your camera (or become a victim of theft), there's not much you can do. Unlike a smartphone, you can't remotely lock or map your camera. You can only retrace your route in the hope that the device is still where you left it.

However, there is one more chance, if not to get your camera back, then at least to find out its fate. The website Stolencamerafinder allows you to find photos taken with your device on the Internet. To do this, you have to upload a photo to the site that you took with this camera. The service will pull the device's serial number from the EXIF data and try to find a match in the metadata of the images uploaded to the Internet.

If it finds a match, and the photo was not taken by you, you will have a chance to contact the person who published it. Stolencamerafinder has a whole section devoted to stories of lost gear actually being returned to its original owner thanks to this site.

Unfortunately, the possibilities of the service are not unlimited. Some sites (including Facebook) do not store EXIF data of photos, which makes it impossible to track such photos. In addition, the list of compatible models is limited. However, even if the device is not on the list, it is worth checking: although support for the Canon EOS M6 is not declared, the system still recognizes it, as this model indicates the serial number in the EXIF data.

If no matches are found, you can check the site manually from time to time, or connect email notifications - but this requires a Pro-subscription (which costs $8 per month).

Let's be honest: the chances of getting your camera back are unlikely, even if you can contact the person who found or stole it. But in that case, at least you'll acknowledge that you've done everything you can, and you can move on.