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    This does not fall within the domain of copyright as the exam is not redistributed or copied any further. Now, the question is not about the lawfulness but about ethics, but the ethical backbone of copyright is avoiding economic damage to the copyright holder. Nothing that the asker intended to do would cause such a damage. A similar thing applies to intellectual property: Unless the asker claims that the exam is their intellectual property, this is not touched. (BTW: With your arguments it would also be illegal or unethical to take photographs of almost anything created by a human.) Commented Dec 6, 2016 at 18:43
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    @Wrzlprmft It seems plausible to me that copyright law would cover this circumstance, because taking a photo of something on a piece of paper does make a copy of that content - this is basically what a photocopier does, after all. Taking a photo of a building or sculpture or some arbitrary object would not be similarly equivalent to making a copy. Of course, then you could get into a fair use defense, which might plausibly excuse taking a picture of e.g. a painting, and might or might not be applicable here. Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 4:54
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    @Wrzlprmft No. Copyright subsists in any creative work, whether or not it is intended for distribution and whether or not the author intended to charge for distribution. This most definitely includes exams. The distinction between written works and, say, a building is that a photograph of a written work is a copy of that work, whereas a photograph of a building is just a picture of the building, not a copy of the building. Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 13:44
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    Note that the OPS original statement involved photographing for the purpose of redistribution Commented Dec 8, 2016 at 3:18
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    @Agent_L: I am rather familiar with German copyright law, and copying a text for private purposes is explicitly and clearly allowed under § 53 (1) UrhG. By the way: According to the sources I could find, it’s not illegal to take photographs of copyrighted buildings in France, Italy, and Belgium, it’s only forbidden to distribute photographs or similar. Commented Dec 8, 2016 at 19:47