Need Tips on Taking Photos of Displays (projector screens, Plasmas, LCD, even CRT)

[Digital-Nitrate]

I'm defineitely not much of a photographer, and as such, I've never had any sucesses talking high quality photographs of images that are on display, whether it be on a projection screen in a home thetare, or on digital flat screens like plasmas and LCD, and especially not with traditional analog CRTs.


What tips can anyone give this ignorant photog?


BTW: Here are some of my latest, best efforts, which clearly fall well short of capturing the detail in the images:

Also here are the settings that I used and at least for now I have gotten the best results with... but that isn't saying much I'm afraid.

• Color Space = sRGB
• Shutter Speed = 1/60
• Lens Focal Length = 11mm
• F Stop = 4.1
• ISO = 400 /500
• Metering Mode = Multi Pattern
• White Balance = Manual
• (no flash naturally)

As you'll notice, there are some pics where the white is getting crushed, and others where the dark parts are getting crushed, and the colors are not only off, but in some cases worst that others.

Help!

 

[TB]

Depending on your camera, an ISO of 400+ will make the images grainy. Adjust that down to 200 or 100. Doing that may required you to slow the shutter speed down or it could remedy your blooming whites. You'll need to play with it and see. I jsut had another thought - does your TV run at 60hz? If so, 1/60 shutter might be part of the problem, as you are picking up one cycle and no more. Try going to 1/50 or 1/40 (or, again, whatever setting works) and see if the diagonal lines go away.

What white balance are you using? I'm fairly limited with my camera (as opposed to my boss' D80), but for TV shots, I use the "flash" setting. That seems to give me the most accuracy.

Everything else, at least according to my untrained eye, looks to be fine. I'm sure someone will correct me, though.

 

[stumpydino]

they look good for screen shots!

 

[Digital-Nitrate]

Depending on your camera, an ISO of 400+ will make the images grainy. Adjust that down to 200 or 100. Doing that may required you to slow the shutter speed down or it could remedy your blooming whites. You'll need to play with it and see.

As far as an camera goes, we don't have a top notch professional SLR and I have not familiarized myself with all the different types of manual adjustments yet... just playing around with the many preset options.

If it helps here is the info on our SLR style camera:

Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS

• DPReview Specs

Nothing super special, but a great value. 👍

It has a lot of options and preset settings, although I just can't seem to find one that does a great job of capturing accurate images from a display.

I just had another thought - does your TV run at 60hz? If so, 1/60 shutter might be part of the problem, as you are picking up one cycle and no more. Try going to 1/50 or 1/40 (or, again, whatever setting works) and see if the diagonal lines go away.

Those particular shots were from a plasma, so that shouldn't be an issue right?

What white balance are you using?

I didn't make any specific white balance adjustments. Next time I'll pay more attention to that. 👍

I'm fairly limited with my camera (as opposed to my boss' D80), but for TV shots, I use the "flash" setting. That seems to give me the most accuracy.

When you say "flash", do you mean it actually uses the flash? If so, doesn’t that give you terrible reflections off the screen not to mention washing out the image?

 

[Speedster502]

I've tried taking pictures of our LCD screen before and I can tell you know, without a digital capture card, getting rid of those grainy streaks is impossible. You can try most of those settings, and nothing really will change. Your pictures will be less grainy taking pictures on a LCD screen rather than a CRT but it basically runs on the same principle as taking pictures of computer monitors, or when TV shows show a computer monitor and you see those black lines running across the screen. So I'm afraid I can't offer much help to your situation.

 

[TB]

As far as an camera goes, we don't have a top notch professional SLR and I have not familiarized myself with all the different types of manual adjustments yet... just playing around with the many preset options.

As long as you have a "Manual" mode, and it looks like yours does, you should be able to dig around in the menu and adjust shutter speed, ISO and white balance, among others.

If it helps here is the info on our SLR style camera:

Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS

• DPReview Specs

Nothing super special, but a great value. 👍

When I bought my camera 5 years ago, it was pretty good. Now, not so much so I know all about nothing special.

Those particular shots were from a plasma, so that shouldn't be an issue right?

Indeed, but you have CRT listed in the thread title, too.

*looks around and whistles* How was that for a half-assed cover?

When you say "flash", do you mean it actually uses the flash? If so, doesn’t that give you terrible reflections off the screen not to mention washing out the image?

Not actually firing the flash, but using the flash white balance setting, as it is the closest to the lamp used in the TV as far as color temperatures (or color rendering (see the chart on the right hand side) go.

 

[NLxAROSA]

TB has covered most of it, so no extra comments there. But I have some more background info that might help you out.

Most camera's try to slightly overexpose the pictures. It tries to average the exposure on the total image, hence the highlights are usually overexposed. Use exposure compensation if it really bothers you (you probably need to set it to shutter or aperture priority to be able to use that).

Then there is the limited dynamic range of the camera itself: in the picture of you waving, there are both underexposed parts (black) and overexposed parts (white). The camera will, once again, average it out and so the parts in between are very nice (the floor, etc.), but the parts on both ends of the dynamic range are lost.

You're not going to get that specific picture right on any DSLR without resorting to things like HDR. If you base exposure on the light parts, the dark parts will be underexposed. Base it on the dark parts, the light parts will be overexposed. Base it on average and you get the worst of both worlds. It's a limitation of the dynamic range of digital cameras.

BTW, you cán reduce the effect by not including the black parts of your TV in the picture.

Oh, and flashing into a window or TV is not a problem if you do it at an angle (which you don't want for screenshots )

And Photoshop helps too, it can help bring back or reduce dark areas and highlights and fix the color temperature or hue issues. And you can increase the saturation a bit so colors look less dull. If you shoot in RAW (your camera can do that, I checked) instead of JPG, there is even more you can do about exposure issues.

 

[TB]

All very good points, NLxAROSA. 👍

And Photoshop helps too, it can help bring back or reduce dark areas and highlights and fix the color temperature or hue issues. And you can increase the saturation a bit so colors look less dull.

Exactly. This took me all of about 3 minutes to do in Paint Shop Pro.

Crop of D-N's original picture:

Gamma Correction to brighten dark areas:

Arithmetic to average the two together:

It's not great, but not too bad considering the time spent on it.

 

[Sprite]

Apparently the slower the shutter speed the better the image, recommended about 1/15 as said above you need to grab the full cycle of the TV for LCD, but with Plasma I'm not sure at all (Sorry )

I've found a Hit and Miss approach to be the best way, take as many shots and try off-setting to one side with the flash only slightly off at an angle to stop the glare, that may yield good results, but if you keep at it and experiment you will get it right then you just need to reproduce it every time you take your shots.

I would recommend a tripod with longer shutter speeds, that way more light and possibly better pics.







These were taken off an LCD of mine with an SLR but given time I could get the same with a compact too.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Those look awesome! But they are still images right? A long shutter speed wouldn't work with Home or fast moving games, since the characters are always moving. But for stills it's ideal. If your screen has a refresh rate of 60Hz you'll catch 4 frames at 1/15 of a second. I think lengthen them even further to get a nice shot at 100 ISO/f11.0 or something like that.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I was always under the impression that you need a shutter speed of 1/25s, which is one frame of action (irrespective of the screen refresh rate). You can usually sort the lines and "grain" with a moiré filter.

But the hardest thing is to get the camera exactly straight on to the screen, in the exact middle, so as to avoid distortion. Shoot at at least 50mm focal length too.

 

[Beerz]

But the hardest thing is to get the camera exactly straight on to the screen, in the exact middle, so as to avoid distortion. Shoot at at least 50mm focal length too.

I fully agree with this part. By the way, what's a moiré filter?


I have taken quite a few shots on my living room with the LCD turned on, only a few were attempts at the LCD itself, and those were the ones coming out the worse.

The pics I have where the LCD image is almost spot on were the ones where I was making experiments at shooting other stuff, using slower shutter speeds. I ended up noticing the LCD (or the part of it showing on the photo in most cases) had an almost flawless image, with no loss of detail, no grain or stripes acroos the image.

I'm guessing if one wants to really do it, it's just a matter of experimenting.

Also might be necessary to adjust the brightness/backlighting of the set so that the white on the image doesn't blow out with the slower shutter speed

 

[Speedster502]

These look fantastic! Would you mind, if possible, sharing the EXIF data? I want to see if I can possibly replicate these results with some PS3 games or something similar.

 

[Sprite]

Yeh no probs I will dig out the RAW files. I'm going to experiment tomorrow with the camera and LCD see if I can tie down the best settings (for my set up anyway). But for now I need some sleep so from me and my iPhone goodnight all.

 

[Azuremen]

I was always under the impression that you need a shutter speed of 1/25s, which is one frame of action (irrespective of the screen refresh rate). You can usually sort the lines and "grain" with a moiré filter.

But the hardest thing is to get the camera exactly straight on to the screen, in the exact middle, so as to avoid distortion. Shoot at at least 50mm focal length too.

Well, some video files are set to 24.5 frames per second, so it may have small issues. Ideally, a slower shutter speed will always be better with a still image on a display. Honestly, I'd pause the image, use a tripod, close down to F/11 or such, use ISO 100, and shoot with aperture priority. And adjust the exposure compensation down at least a stop, maybe 2.

 

[Sprite]

Well as I said last night I would give the meta data for the images above, im going to go a little bit furthur with a few more images.

All images have been scaled down from 3888*2592 to 600*400 for speed of loading, but I will give the meta data for each shot. They were all taken the same night from a Canon 400D on a tripod and shutter was controlled via remote. The LCD is a Sony Bravia 46X2000 calibrated. As for anything other than that I really don't know.

All the lights were off in the room so pitch black to get as much light from the TV and obviously most are of paused movies or games, only the bumper cam shot from GT was running at the time of shot.

The images don't have any kind of sharpening or funny photoshop tricks so just scaled.

F5.6
0.8
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
1/4
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
1/8
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
1/10
ISO400
33mm

F5.6
1/10
ISO400
33mm

F5.6
0.4
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
0.4
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
1/4
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
0.3
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
0.3
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
0.8
ISO100
33mm

F5.6
0.8
ISO100
33mm

Hope that helps. If I get chance (that will be the day ) I will try and do a more scientific test along with my mums compact camera.

 

[TB]

Outstanding job, Sprite!

Hope that helps. If I get chance (that will be the day ) I will try and do a more scientific test along with my mums compact camera.

I can have a go at both a low end SLR-like camera with a fair amount of manual adjustments and a simple P&S with so few adjustments that I'm more inclined to say it has none.