Worried About Lost Gear?
A new service from GadgetTrak is available called CameraTrace. It’s a great new service that gives you a little peace of mind every night! Using not-so-new technology, and applying it in a slightly different way, CameraTrace will help you locate and get your precious camera back. It does this through what is called reverse image search. Now be sure not to get this confused with Image Recovery, as they definitely won’t give you a hand due to you loosing your photos!
Reverse Image Search:
I’m sure that by now many of you photographers have heard and/or use TinEye, a reverse image search (RIS) engine. It looks for images that you own, and notifies you. Up to this point, TinEye has been the dominant leader in RIS… until the big boys walked in. Google now able to offer the same service for free, and from accounts, it is much more accurate. Who could blame them? They have the powerhouse of thousands of servers scouring the internet while TinEye was just a small company (in comparison). If you’re looking for a good article on Google’s services in relation to TinEye, check out Zdnet’s article on who’s the dominant RIS company.
How CameraTrace Uses It:
CameraTrace uses the same principles. It reads the EXIF data from images around the world, and matches a special serial number to that of your camera. From all understanding (feel free to read their FAQ page), if you claim a lost camera, they record the web and wait for an image from your stolen (or lost) camera to appear. From there they work to get your gear back. Also, there is a CameraTrack tag that you can stick to your $2000 body with an ID number which a good citizen can report should they find your gear.
Just like TinEye, they also check for copyright issues while they browse the web for your images. Might as well offer this service too since they’re needing to scan the EXIF data anyways!
At only $10 per body, I think it’s a fair deal – especially since they do a lot of heavy work getting your gear back. If you’re looking for another option, check these RIS guys out.