Are digital photographs admissible in court?

I'm a landlord in Georgia. My latest tenants trashed my house, and I took over 200 digital photographs of the damage. They claim I will not be able to use them in court to prove the damage to the property since they were taken with a digital camera. Is this true?

Digital photographs are admissible.

Most states have evidence rules similar to the Federal Rules of Evidence. FRE Article X (Contents of Writings, Recordings and Photographs), Rule 101(1) defines writings and recordings to include magnetic, mechanical or electronic recordings. Rule 101(3) states that if data are stored in a computer or similar device, any printout or other output readable by sight, shown to reflect the data accurately, is an "original". Rule 101(4) states that a duplicate is a counterpart produced by the same impression as the original鈥y mechanical or electronic re-recording, 鈥?or by other equivalent techniques which accurately reproduces the original. FRE 103 provides that duplicates are generally as admissible as the original unless there is some question as to the authenticity of the copy. This means a photograph can be stored digitally in a computer, that a digital photograph stored in a computer is considered an original, and any exact copy of the digital photograph is admissible as evidence.

Be sure to preserve the original in its original file format. For example, if you shot in the "raw" format and then converted the raw format to .jpg for printing, be sure not to delete the raw original. Don't overwrite the original when you save the photo (i.e. if you crop it, save it under a new name).

No, they're admissible ... but the court will take them "for what its worth."

Remember, you can alter a regular photograph almost as easy as you can alter a digital photograph (simply by scanning the regular photograph, making your alterations, and then printing to a negative).

Your tenants are, to put it mildly, confused.

that does not sound right, if you can change the date on it, you can do it on any camera. keep it on the camera, don't put it on the computer, because i guess some people know how to mess around with those things, but if it is that bad, you would think they could tell it hadn't been messed with. have you tried to google digital camera's court, maybe cases have been done like you are wanting to do.

I wouldn't see why the type of camera would make a difference really.

Did a quick google search on it (see source)

Good luck :)

You should try. Although it is harder to prove because there is always a possibility someone will photoshop a picture, there are ways to see if it is an original or not. Plus, when you have that many photos, if you photoshop them, you might make inconsistancies. It wouldn't hurt to try, and I know for sure that your tenants hope to scare you into not pressing charges.

Print the photos and give them to a lawyer. A picture is worth a thousand words.

It is up to a judge to accept or reject an evidence/ You request the judge to present the evidence and if he accepts it, you will present it. There is nothing wrong with the digital photos. You can present the witness testimony, of the people who tried to clean up the place, to support the photos.

You're winning. The court will certainly believe that you have less reason to alter hundreds of pictures than your ex-tenants have for lying about the condition they left the premises.

Rest assured, a professional graphics artist can analyze a digital photo stored on a disk and as long as it's in high resolution, he can tell if it's been tampered with. Cutting and splicing will always leave behind tell-tale signs no matter how you try to airbrush them out, and if the hidden JPEG header says "Photoshop" then that's a clear giveaway it's been loaded into that paint program.