Taking (good) pictures of TV screens

[Dave S]

These days, with good compositing being pretty simple to pull off in programs like PhotoShop, the easiest way is just take two separate shots and combine. them. That's what I do. When shooting the screen, do not use ANY lighting. The screen provides incident light and any reflected light from a lighting instrument or even ambient light in the room will hurt, not help.

If you want to take one "real" picture, use a light meter to get a reading from the screen only. Do this in a darkened room. Then set your lighting of the cabinet to produce a proper exposure while maintaining the same light level on the overall shot as the one you read from the screen. You may need to fudge a bit one way or the other to get the best results.

Remember that the TV picture is presented on the screen one line at a time. Human persistence of vision (along with the persistence of the P4 phosphor) combines all the lines into a single picture. The camera won't necessarily do that. Make sure to use a slow shutter speed when shooting the screen, at least 1/30 of a second, to allow enough time for a complete video frame to be drawn while the shutter is open. If there's not much motion in the video, a slower shutter speed can sometimes produce even better results.

--Dave Sica