Shooting Computer Screens

Hey

Just wanted to get a bit of advice. The company I work for has asked me to do some shots to update their corporate brochure. They want some images of people using our software on computer screens.

What I wanted was some tips or advice on the best way of exposing correctly, with flash, for the screen and the surrounding environment. Presumably I need to balance shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

As I saw on an avatar recently, better to ask a stupid question and be a fool for 5 minutes rather than not ask a be a fool for life

JuSlaughter wrote in post #8367722
Hey

Just wanted to get a bit of advice. The company I work for has asked me to do some shots to update their corporate brochure. They want some images of people using our software on computer screens.

What I wanted was some tips or advice on the best way of exposing correctly, with flash, for the screen and the surrounding environment. Presumably I need to balance shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

As I saw on an avatar recently, better to ask a stupid question and be a fool for 5 minutes rather than not ask a be a fool for life

shot the shot, then have them send "print screens" of their software they want on the computer screens.

use free transform in photoshop to place it there.

typically shooting screens directly, big old CRTs or Flatscreens, won't end up looking nice, because they are backlit and flaws/pixels are more apparent.

I hadn't thought of that. The simplest solution is sometimes the best.

I wish I could get screen captures from electronic instruments made 20 years ago! The key to conventional (non screen captures) is to expose using a sufficiently slow shutter speed to grab one full frame. In the case of broadcast television before HDTV and digital transmission, for example, with two interlaced screen refreshes to make one video frame (NTSC at 30 Hz, PAL at 25Hz) you had to use 1/30 sec for an NTSC TV to be captured. Modern computer screens typically refresh at 60Hz or 72Hz, so use the appropriate shutter speed when the screen capture is not available.

This might help with blending the light:
Simple "every-day-emergency" location lighting

Be sure to check out the Strobist links in there.

This was the first method that popped into my head as well, a whole lot easier than trying to balance everything in camera.