Having spent many years working and saving to buy the gear we use daily for our photography, it is a constant worry that some morally deficient person might relieve you of all those hard earned lenses and camera bodies. Sure you can get all your gear insured (and you should) but the more security you can have with your gear the better.Recently we signed up to Lens Tag, an online catalogue of all you lenses and bodies. Lens Tag is good because they ‘verify’ your equipment by getting you to upload an image of your serial number. If you are unlucky enough to have your camera bag ‘lightened’ you can simply set the items to ‘stolen’. This is where the magic takes over as once an item it marked as stolen Lens Tag‘s server takes over and searched for the serial numbers in the exif data of the photos, if any are online that is. This can help recover your items plus it makes it just bit harder to sell stolen gear as they also have an handy list of any equipment that has been registered as stolen. A handy reference for those small ads that sell second hand camera gear on the cheep. If you decide to ever sell any of your gear, Lens Tag provide a handy link to show that they have verified you as the owner of the lens or camera.This is the list of stolen gear registered with Lens Tag
Another nice thing is an online list of your own verified gear, that you can password protect. This list gives you the new RRP (USA $ amount) and the average used price of you gear today as well as the new price and the totals of each. This really reminds you the value of your gear and the cost to replace, also a handy plus if you are making an insurance claim. You can transfer ownership of your gear to another person, if you decide to sell anything, with a few clicks and it will go straight into their gear list already verified.
The last nice thing you should know about Lens Tag is that the service is offered for free.
