New Nikon patent prevents theft

A new patent filed by Nikon in Japan looks like the company is planning a password protection system to make certain lens/camera body combinations work

It's a simple idea and it's a fairly great one according to the Japanese patent number 2013-61508 unearthed by the Nikon Rumours site: take a camera serial number, take a lens serial number, and ensure that you need to enter a password or PIN number to make them work together. Exactly how the company is planning to implement it is a bit less clear - you certainly wouldn't want to be doing it every time you turned your camera on - but it would certainly make sense for it to be an option for users when a lens is connected to a body for the first time, for example.

"Lenses are probably the most nickable thing"

We can see this proving to be a popular feature in the camcorder sector too, especially given that good lenses are probably the most nickable thing in our industry at the moment, being both very valuable and emminently portable. Barely a major tradeshow goes by nowadays without behind-the-scenes tales of at least one set of Primes being stolen from a stand, and anything that keeps people's hard-earned property in their own hands can only be a good thing.

The author remembers turning up to interview a production company a few years back to find the odd sight of the owner dancing about in jubilation over the break-in it had suffered the night before and the theft of two brand new iMacs. Why so happy, I asked? "That was sitting right beside them," he said pointing to a flight case full of Zeiss HD Primes,"and they had no idea what they were."