On a recent walk along a Californian beach I found a compact camera, covered in sand and salt water. The camera was very dead, but out of interest I eventally managed to extract the 2GB SD memory card. After drying it out, it was readable with errors. When totally dry, it read without errors.
I was keen to try and contact the owner and return the photos, over 500 of them. Unfortunately, there is very little on a memory chip to tell you about an owner, only the camera, and date and time of the photos. From this I could determine that the last photo had been taken about 10 days before I found the camera. I did try and add a 'Found camera' to a local lost and found website, but no reply.
Recently, I did a bit more investigation by looking at the photos more closely. Obviously the owner was a young person, with lots of photos in night clubs, no names identifiable, but also some at a college. One photo though I do hope will be a major clue is that it includes, possibly the owner, or close friend holding a college certificate with their unusal surname name on it. A bit of Googling took me to Facebook, and I hope a perfect match. (The name and college course both match, and the photo looks similar). I have now sent a message to the person, and am waiting for a reply.
The moral of the story is that if you want goods returned, it can be helpful to have some return details stored with it.
As a post script, the owner did contact me and a DVD of photos was sent. I have just received a very nice letter of thanks.
