The same *may* be true for libgphoto2, but I haven't tested it. Found on alpha, confirmed on amd64.
Went with removing the tests if !use exif that fail without exif instead, hope I don't regret in the future as the tests are just by numbers. libgphoto2[-exif] emerged fine with FEATURES=test commit 8cf743ab63778622b848d1fb31ed7ead9a7e9e58 Author: Mart Raudsepp <leio@gentoo.org> Date: Tue Mar 28 19:12:40 2017 +0300 media-gfx/gphoto2: fix tests with USE=-exif Gentoo-bug: 610024
*** Bug 635506 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***