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Old 07-29-2010, 11:44 AM
Phil Nelson's Avatar
Phil Nelson Phil Nelson is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2006
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Terrific image on that TV. You will enjoy watching it.

Taking screen photos drives me insane. I have taken thousand of shots -- literally -- in attempts to get a true image of what the TV really looks like playing in normal room light. If the rest of the scene looks normal, the screen is always overexposed.

The only solution for me is to take two photos as you say, with the camera on a tripod. First photo with room lights up and TV turned off. Second photo with room lights lower (not completely dark) and TV turned on. For the "turned on" photos, I take a few with the TV at different brightness/contrast settings, then pick the best one later. Once you have two that look good separately, copying & pasting the screen from one to the other does the trick.

Backlighting, or indirect lighting in general, work better than a single strong source.

Glare is an issue if the TV has a flat safety glass. In some cases, I've had to use two black dropcloths to eliminate glare. One spread on the floor in front of the TV and the other pinned to the wall behind the camera. Even then, you may need to pin a black towel around the tripod legs to keep them from showing up as a reflection.

Phil
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