If somebody took a photo on my camera, and I uploaded the photo to facebook, whose property is it?

In general as most of the posts are saying - it is the person who took the picture. However this normally assumes some skill is used in taking the picture.

But lets say you asked them to take a picture of you and they just clicked the shutter on your behalf, you 'commissioned' the photograph and so you could argue it is 'yours' as they did not compose the image or contribute to it, they had no intellectual or creative input. They only followed your instructions.

Normally ownership only becomes an issue if there is some sort of conflict. So the question really is why are you asking?

I disagree with Cameron.

Take it a little further to see what I mean. Say you loaned your camera to an expert photographer who took it to a war zone and made some important, award winning photographs that he was able to sell to Time magazine. Now, would the photos be YOURS and all the payment go to you just because it was your camera? Of course not.

Same with your situation, just on a much smaller scale of course. The photo copyright belongs to the person who TOOK the photo, be he using your camera or his.

steve

Technically it belongs to the person who created it. In this case that would be the person who took the shot, not the person who owned the camera.

There are exceptions to that. For instance if you put the camera on a tripod, composed the shot, set the exposure, and then had someone else press the button you would own it since you were the creator.

I really wouldn't worry about it too much. I don't think you have to worry about being sued by the person who took the photo, and even if you were, I don't think it would go very far before a judge kicked it out.

The person who took the picture, it's intellectual property that's copyright, in other words the thoughts they had when taking the shot.

Who owns the equipment is immaterial unless a contract is involved as in when working for a Company using their equipment. Then the contract will give them the rights not the photographer. In all other cases it's the Photographer, the person who presses the shutter.

Chris

It belongs to the person who fixed the work so in the case of photography, it belongs to the person who actually pressed the shutter release on the camera.

if it is an artistic picture it is there property (to use in art shows/there portfolio/any other artistic usage) but still you do not have to phisicly give them the picture or file seeing as it is your camera unless of coarse they rented it for a set amount of money. but if the picture is not art who cares

it is deffinetley theirs. They took the picture.

yours