C300: Camera Theft - C300 and C100s

Eric Coughlin

Eric Coughlin

Veteran
My house was broken into on Sunday the 2nd and they stole one of my C300 Mark IIs, two C100 Mark Is, a C100 Mark II, and various other equipment. The cameras were setup in a configuration similar to the photo below, with Manfrotto plates on the C100s, a Kessler plate on the C300 Mark II, with a Zacuto helmet and handle on the C300.

Working on trying to get serial numbers from B&H (which is closed now, big surprise). If anyone sees them in the wild, let me know. They stole the batteries (Canon and Wasabi), but did not steal any chargers.

There were some packages from Amazon and B&H left on my doorstep a week earlier which were robbed, which was likely by chance, and after seeing the video equipment in the package and my company name on the package, they must have figured to break in to see what else they could get.

IMG_6289+edited+1.jpg



Around $25k of gear was stolen. Waiting to find out if my insurance covers replacement cost or depreciated value; I had thought it was replacement but on the phone they said depreciated.

I haven't been using the C100s much lately, so I ended up buying two more C300 Mark IIs to replace the three C100s and one C300 that were stolen, so I now own three C300 Mark IIs. This may work out well in the long run.

Time to beef up my home security. How do you secure your home and vehicle from theft?
 
Eric,
Sad to hear this. Routine burglary or did they specifically target cameras? How efficient is the police in recovery of such stolen goods?
 
As ugly as it will be, a security cage inside to hold the gear (bolted to the studs or floor). Will at least slow them down. You will probably need to put in an alarm system, and cameras wouldn't be a bad choice... They will be back unless they get caught at a pawn shop. Chances are good that these are less than casual thieves looking for drug money. They may not even be the people that stole the packages, those people may have tipped off another group that handles the more dangerous jobs.

I'd also take a good look around the exterior of the property, I'm guessing there are some marks outside that the thieves use to designate good targets. I assume the police would find these and hopefully clue you in to what they mean.

Decent but cheap camera system:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA46G57R2213
Buy the optional bigger hard drive. The cameras are bigger than you might think, this is actually a bonus... You don't want to covertly capture the thieve's image, you want them to see the cameras and decide to move on to easier targets. The dome cameras are about 6-7 inches in diameter, and the other cameras are about 10-12 long from the mounting surface. The autodetect/record does not work on the first two channels, not sure why, but it is a known "feature", you can trigger them from a different camera or from IR sensor, door switch, etc. The cameras are all powered over IP, comes with eight 100 foot cables but you'll probably want to buy cable and connectors for a better looking install (Lowes has decent indoor/outdoor bulk cable) and Cables and Kits in Florida has decent prices on connectors, crimpers, and direct burial ethernet cable.

And all that said, I real "professional" alarm system may get your insurance rates lower.
 
Also, when you get the serial numbers, post them far and wide for as many eyes to see as possible. In three months when these show up on ebay it would be nice to know if they were stolen.
 
I feel for you. I had my truck stolen in Atlanta about 12 years ago. Luckily the camera was in the hotel room with me, but they picked the truck clean. When it was found a few days later there wasn't much left. A battery charger and a few stands, I believe. They even took all of the sandbags. I think the insurance claim ended up around $40K-$45K I posted about it on a few sites with complete serial numbers(for items that had them) and model numbers and descriptions. Ironically, I had just inventoried all of my gear a month or so before and had everything in a binder and organized and was able to provide everything to the police almost immediately. The Atlanta police are absolutely worthless, though. Dealing with them was almost as bad as the initial theft.

Moving forward, definetly have an alarm installed and strongly think about cameras/surveillance. The cameras may not stop a theft, but may greatly raise the chances that the person or persons can be caught if one occurs. Do not have any gear shipped to your house. Get a PO Box at a UPS store(They also have a physical street address. Some merchants will not ship to po boxes). They can accept and hold your packages. Also, the above idea of having a secure area within your house, at least for the high-dollar/high-value items like cameras and lenses, is a very good one. Thieves wanna be in and out as quickly as they can. If there is something to impede them and slow them down, especially if there is an alarm going off, they may say F it, it's not worth getting caught and bolt before they can do any real damage. Dogs are also good deterrents. They bark and make a lot of noise and can do a lot of damage to a person, if they want. I have five dogs inside my house and everyone of them is like a radar/surveillance system. You know someone is walking down the road at least half a block before you can even see them.

Good luck with your insurance company. Hopefully they are as easy to deal with as mine was. And I do recommmend a replacement cost policy. Luckily that's what I had.
 
Sorry to hear about your loss. Some years back when I was shooting weddings, my home was burglarized and I had my Mamiya RZ bodies, lenses and film backs stolen. When I provided the police report, serial numbers, and bills of sale to my insurance company, the insurance company purchased replacements from B&H and shipped the camera equipment to me.

Five years ago I signed up for a free service my local post office offers. If you have a P.O. Box, you can sign up with the post office for a service where your packages are delivered to your local post office. The post office will sign for the package if required. All of the major shippers, UPS, Fed Ex, etc. now deliver packages to the post office. Some retailers will not ship to a P.O. Box address so I was told to have my shipping address as follows:

Name
Company Name
123 Main St, #456 where the 123 Main St. is the post office address and #456 is my P.O. Box number
City, State, Zip

I now have all off my packages delivered to my post office address. I have had everything from iMac computers to all of my video gear delivered to the post office. The post office places a card in my P.O. Box notifying me a package has arrived. I hand the card to clerk at the business counter and he/she gets my package from the back. The only problem I've had is the post office misplaced a package internally a couple of times, but it was found within a couple of days.

Good luck.
 
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Sorry to hear this Eric.....hang in there and please do post the serial numbers....
Jim Martin
CinemaWorks
 
Good luck Eric, this sucks. Fingers crossed re insurance. Check local and non-local craigslist, eBay etc. (I'm sure you've thought of this).

I think physically preventing people from entering is your best bet. These days it seems like neighbors ignore house or car alarms when they hear them but it might tell the criminal to get out of there faster and end up taking less.

Does anyone keep their gear in a secure storage facility?
 
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I bought a used gun safe (10 gauge steel) and bolted to the floor. It is inside a locked closet with steel door and frame as well as reinforced walls at a shared office. Motion detection cameras (Blink) give me alerts and video feed to my phone. You can eventually break into anything but the longer it takes the greater chance of law enforcement arriving in the act. This setup which was DIY cost me under $2K.
 
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Ben_Ericson said:
Eric, is this your C300 Mk2? The listing looked really sketchy, I literally found just did a search for stolen c300 in Georgia and found this thread.

They even mention having the battery but no charger.

View attachment 132652

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Cannon-C300-Mark-II/312234741744?hash=item48b2a40ff0:g:O~QAAOSwLVFbkt-Q
Click to expand...
Wow! This looks like it. They even spelled Canon with 2 n, Cannon. This is fishy. Also, the guy is a ebay member since September 7 2018. It's his first sell.
 
Red Flags all over this! The listing shows the guy is right outside of ATL and he misspelled "Canon" and "Zacuto". I'll buy you a Coke if this isn't a hot camera.

Eric, call the police ASAP and tell them about this. Have them contact eBay and set-up a sting.
 
Nice work. I suggest this thread be deleted immediately and go to quiet mode. Private messages etc. Eric, if you want it deleted, hit the exclamation point in the blue triangle in the upper right hand corner of your first post to get the moderator's attention and make your request.
 
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