Robbed

Robbed. That's the word that kept ringing around my mind all day today.

I woke up this morning none the wiser. Went through my morning rituals, then went out front to put the recyclables out for pickup. As I turned around I saw the Prius, and immediately saw something was wrong on the inside. A reached for the door on the drivers side and it beeped open. Except the doors on the other side were somehow not locked, because that's the side they (the robbers) entered. Still closed, but not locked. How thoughtful of them to close up when they were done.

They took two of my cameras and a Motorola Xoom Android tablet. The night before I'd gotten home late and tired and that was what led to the unfortunate chain of events that followed. I'd dragged in my µ4/3rds kit and my work notebook and my cellphone, thinking I'd come out later and grab the rest, my E-1, E-3, and the Xoom tablet. The E-1 and E-3 were hidden down in the boot and covered, but I'd stupidly left the Xoom on the back seat, glass face up, for all to see if you came by and looked in. And that's what looked like happened. Somebody came scouting through, looking to grab stuff. They looked in and thought they'd found an iPad. They opened up the car and started tossing stuff to see what else was there, and they found the DSLRs hidden away. The car was pretty thoroughly turned over, everything emptied and scattered.

As Matt Robertson (@thewsreviews) later tweeted, "here's hoping that there's an especially gruesome punishment for people who break into hybrid cars and steal niche cameras."

Did all the usual, such as filing a report with the police and with the insurance company.

The issue isn't the monetary value, which to me is bad enough. It's the sentimental attachment. The E-3 was my first "big" SLR in a long time, and my first "serious" DSLR. I'd taken tens of thousands of photographs with that camera since I'd purchased it new, including my sister's wedding and a number of charity functions around central Florida. I'd blogged about it, and freaked out when six-month-old Ruby decided she thought the camera strap was a tug toy. And then there was the E-1. That's the E-1 Kirk Tuck gave to me a year ago. Yes, you can pick up E-1's pretty cheap on the used market, but not that particular one that Kirk purchased new, that had been used by him, and had been given to me. Yes, I'm a sentimental fool; so sue me. And then, of course, there's the lenses, the Zuiko Digital 12-60mm SWD mounted on the E-1 and the Zuiko Digital 50-200mm SWD mounted on the E-3. And the fact that both cameras had vertical grips and hand straps. In other words, cameras set up for serious bare-knuckled outdoor photography.

Fortunately I still have the original papers including serial numbers, the the E-1 has a trail from when I sent it into Olympus to fix a minor problem.

I still have all my  µ4/3rds kit and an E-1 with the Zuiko Digital 50m macro. And my kit bag, with the Sigma and the ZD 9-18mm, and my FL50Rs, etc, etc, etc.

It remains to be seen what insurance will pay for. I've still got means to photograph the world. And it could have been a lot worse. It could have been an act of violence associated with the robbery. I listen to the news and hear of Aurora Colorado, Syria, Sudan, and the ongoing slow-motion decades-long violent mess in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When held up against the harsh light of world events, all I did was loose a couple of niche cameras out of a hybrid to a stupid person or persons unknown.

Oh well. Life goes on.