Selfhosted

I use nextcloud for this. It's a bit much for just simple file share, but it works for me.

Mind if I suggest my own software, copyparty?

Regarding authentication, someone who has an account (in this case just yourself) can create password-protected shares which other people can browse, or upload, or browse+upload to (configurable when creating the share).

There is WebDAV support, and it should integrate well enough with shares, but I haven't tested that specifically.

It has photo and video thumbnails, and a basic image-viewer, and with some elbow-grease it can also show exif-tags (gps-coordinates etc).

There is also optional file dedup, so if two people upload the same file, it'll detect and skip that during the 2nd upload (doesn't waste any bandwidth) and swap out the new file with a symlink to the existing one. Default disabled to avoid surprising someone with symlinks.

I think the following command would be enough to get you started:

wget https://github.com/9001/copyparty/releases/latest/download/copyparty-sfx.py
python3 copyparty-sfx.py -a sintan:yourpassword -v .::A,sintan --shr=/shr -e2dsa -e2ts

but since that's entirely unreadable, you can do it with a config file instead,

[global]
  e2dsa  # enable filesystem indexing 
  e2ts  # enable media indexing (music tags)
  shr: /shr  # enable shares under this url

[accounts]
  sintan: yourpassword 

[/]  # create a volume at this url
  /srv/share/partypics  # the filesystem path to share
  accs:
    sintan: A  # give sintan read-write-move-delete-admin

and use it like this:

python3 copyparty-sfx.py -c the.conf

there's another example here and here for inspiration.

I use https://filebrowser.org/ for this.

Nice lightweight filebrowsing/sharing with user management. Users can have their own dedicated directories, or collaborate.

You can also create share links that allow anyone with the link to view/download files. Optionally password protected.

Here's a demo you can mess with: https://demo.filebrowser.org/ User: demo Pass: demo

Pictures specifically Immich.
But I don't know how (well) it works without any password and shared albums.

Resilio Sync or Syncthing

Ah, just saw the browser requirement.

In nextcloud discussions I've heard of Seafile. I've never used it, so not sure what it's capable of.

I am currently super happy with https://sftpgo.com/

https://lychee.electerious.com/

Super small. Lightweight. Web focused. Only downside is no multi-user access. Setup an account to share between your friends, and give them the login information. Then they can upload albums, edit albums, whatever. Anything uploaded is private unless shared, then anyone with the link can view the photos.

Seems like a decent fit for you. They're also working on multiple users.

I still haven't tried it but I think someone suggested sftpgo for a similar use case a couple of days ago.

Seafile?

I’ve used WebDAV with Nephele:

https://hub.docker.com/r/sciactive/nephele

It works with multiple users and has built in browser support.

Owlfiles on mobile makes it easy to import all your photos to it.

https://bewcloud.com/

https://github.com/bewcloud/bewcloud

Is a new option I recently learned about.

Self-plug: PENEfiles! (yes it’s an unfortunate name but I didn’t know back then cuz I am not a native speaker). Comes with a tag system and file ownership management. Supports direct link sharing, and the whole website can be visited without logging in. Here is a detailed intro and here is the source code.

Might take a look at NextCloud though it may be overkill as it’s intended to be a full Google Cloud or Office365 replacement. On the other hand, it is modular so you only have to set up what you actually need.

Maybe something like xbackbone? I've used it to share small-ish files and it works fine; I don't know how much of a pain it would be to use for a group of people, but as long as everyone has an account they should be able to access files with a link.

Many great options already but I would like to add filestash to the list. I did not test it out yet but maybe it fits your need.

Maybe Picoshare

You're kind of asking the wrong question.

Are there ways to share stuff with a group of people that are self-hosted? Absolutely.

Can you get security through those means? Not without some unified authentication.

Maybe back up a few steps and figure out specifically how much trouble you're willing to go through for this. There's a reason these photo sharing platforms exist with sharing and permissions.