When a photographer accidentally drops a camera in a large body of water, there's little chance of the device being recovered. However, one family got back their pictures after a diver rescued a Canon dSLR from a watery grave.
When Markus Thompson dove into the water in Deep Bay outside of Vancouver, he probably didn’t expect to see a rust-covered Canon EOS 1000D when scuba diving in the Pacific Ocean. Thompson was completing a biological survey when he spotted the camera off the end of a wharf. He was able to extract the SD card from the camera and access the pictures on the memory card after a thorough cleaning. He discovered that the camera had been lost in the Pacific since August 2010 and the pictures on the card were of a family on vacation.
Thompson immediately contacted Canon Canada to see if if there was a record of the serial number being registered to someone. Unfortunately, there was no record of a registered owner. He also examined the EXIF data for clues in addition to clues from some of the photos. Thompson ended up turning to Google+ and created a post regarding the pictures which stated “Approximately 50 pictures on the card from a family vacation. If you know a fire fighter from British Columbia whose team won the Pacific Regional Firefit competition, has a lovely wife and (now) 2 year old daughter – let me know. I would love to get them their vacation photos.”
Approximately 300 people commented on the article and it has been shared about 1700 times. Thompson eventually received an email from a friend of the family and he was able to get a mailing address to send the lost camera and memory card back to the original owner. The owner of the camera sent a note to Thompson which stated “Again thank you so much!!! Seeing the pictures brings tears as we really had forgotten what we were missing by not having them.” Thompson also attempted to use Facebook to locate the owner of the camera, but only received a single Like on the post.
[Photo credit: Markus Thompson]
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