A few weeks ago, photographer Daniel Zvereff told me a story about how his Canon 50mm f0.95 lens got stolen while on a trip in Mexico–and today the lens has appeared on eBay for sale. Daniel, who has been featured here on the site many times, has done some fantastic Kodak Aerochrome work, and is currently in our zine, spotted the lens just today and reached out to tell us about it. It was stolen unfortunately when thieves snuck into where he was staying and snatched the lens up.

“I have been working on a long term project for the past few years and the Chiapas region of Mexico was on my list.” Daniel tells us about how the lens theft happened. “I decided on a few day stopover in Guadalajara to shoot some daily life before flying over to my final destination. Every night, I would put all my valuable equipment under my bed before as I was sleeping with the window open in a hot room with no AC.” He continued to add that on the last day he swapped the 50mm for the 35mm on his M6 and forgot to put the lens bag under the bed.

“That evening the thieves came into my bedroom while I was sleeping, by scaling the building, and grabbed the lens bag.”

So what makes us so sure that the lens listed on eBay is Daniel’s? Well, instead of an adapter being used, the lens was straight up converted to Leica M mount and 6 bit coded. The Canon 50mm f0.95 doesn’t matively come in Leica M mount. Plus, it’s being sold with his Red Filter. Even further: the serial numbers on the Canon 50mm f0.95 match from his original purchase of the lens years ago.

Daniel got one with fantastic quality control too–during the manufacturing of this lens the QC was spotty. However, he lucked out and apparently lost that luck.

Daniel tried contacting eBay about it, who told him that they believe that it is indeed his lens but that they can’t do anything about it. Instead, they urge him to file a police report so that they can flag the seller. Unfortunately though, if Daniel tries to do this with the NYPD, then he can’t work today because the process is very long.

The Canon 50mm f0.95 lens (linked here) is being sold from a US seller and shipped via the Mexican Postal Service. Odd? Yes, unless the seller has a history of pawning off lots of stolen goods. So if you happen to be the person who purchases it, know that you’re buying stolen goods–and no matter what, that’s pretty wrong and irresponsible.

If you think you can help, contact Daniel over at his email address: Zvereff[at]gmail.com