In these years the digital camera become an essential tool if we plan a trip or arranging a program or a function. The digital camera help us to take pictures easily and economically. It allows us to view the taken pictures instantly on the viewer. As the device is essential and be used heavily used by different users, there is a great chance to get it lost it somewhere. If the camera is a pricey one and the one you loved the most, it will be a great lose to you. Get back the lost or stolen camera is sometimes very tough, as nobody will not be ready to give back to you as they wish to get a similar one. There is a less chance to find it due its compact size and connectivity. If it is a mobile you can find it using the international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number. What will you do if you lost your camera?
Don’t worry there are some tools available online to find your camera. These tools used the camera serial number to find your camera. Every camera has a serial number, which are supposed to be unique. The serial numbers are normally included in the metadata of the every picture taken by the camera. Photo sharing websites like Flickr, Photobucket, 500px, etc. retain and record this metadata when the photos are uploaded. The technique here we are using is by analyzing these meta data from these sources to find the camera. Pretty clear, isn’t it?
This is an easy tool to find the stolen camera. CameraTrace scours the internet searching for photos that were taken with your camera to help police track it down and get it back for you. They are charging 10$ per camera, but you can try a free trace. CameraTrace utilizes a specialized search technology that looks for images that were taken by a camera. 
The database currently contains over 11,000,000 cameras and is growing fast. They partnered with CPUsage to create a special search "spider" that scans photos on popular photo sharing sites (like Flickr and 500px) and extracts the serial numbers from them if available. This serial number data is stored in Exchangeable Image Format (EXIF) tags in the photo file itself. The process requires considerable computer resources to keep up with the large number of photos uploaded to these sites, so they have leveraged a distributed computing model that allows them to spread this workload across hundreds of computer systems, with more being added daily.
This sites work differently. They 4 simple steps to unite you with your camera. They believe that the more people who know about the website the better your chances will be !. The steps associated are, Update your PROFILE, Add a WORLD MAP marker, publish camera details, and upload your PHOTOS.
Stolencamerafinder uses the serial number stored in your photo to search the web for photos taken with the same camera. The site explores hidden EXIF metadata that is attached to every photo you take with your digital camera (like make, model, date, and serial number), and also looking for new photos that have been uploaded from a camera with the same serial number.
You can drag and drop a saved JPEG image that was taken with your missing camera. Then the site extracts the EXIF information and submits it for matching. If you don’t have a JPEG, you can enter your serial number for searching. But the problem with the stolencamerafinder.com is it cannot crawl sites that remove or modify EXIF data when photos are uploaded (likeFacebook and MySpace). You can check the list of camera models supported by stolencamerafinder.
You can also enter the details of your stolen camera in the about.com camera lost and found forum. If you believe in yourself you can choose this option. All you wan tot do is, just list the information in the forum, and hopefully someone can help you !
Final words
Of these, stolencamerafinder and cameratrace giving us hope. You can try your luck by uploading a photo having the EXIF data of your lost or stolen camera. These technique will work, if you are lucky or the thief is a fool. Thieves can change or delete the EXIF data using some photo tools readily available. But the chance is rare due to unaware of the fact or due to laziness. Another problem is, some manufacturers use the same serial numbers for several models. So there is a chance to have a camera bearing the same serial number, which may lead to detection of the wrong person as the thief !
For anyone interested there is now an exif centric search engine out there as well : http://www.exif-search.com/