There is an official definition of “sets and props” at 43 CFR § 5.12:
Sets and props means items constructed or placed on agency lands to facilitate commercial filming or still photography including, but not limited to, backdrops, generators, microphones, stages, lighting banks, camera tracks, vehicles specifically designed to accommodate camera or recording equipment, rope and pulley systems, and rigging for climbers and structures. Sets and props also include trained animals and inanimate objects, such as camping equipment, campfires, wagons, and so forth, when used to stage a specific scene. The use of a camera on a tripod, without the use of any other equipment, is not considered a prop.
I haven’t heard of too many problems with the definition so far, but I have heard of a couple of instances in the Bay Area in which NPS personnel seemed to interpret a “prop” as anything other than a camera on a tripod; at issue in both cases was a single stand-mounted strobe.
I think the definition is both logically and procedurally a mess; I think a court would have a tough time construing it, and I think it would be difficult to reconcile with Public Law 106-206. But getting into that would seem a topic for a different thread.
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