[comp.sys.mac] Photographing Screen

rkm@PacBell.COM (Richard Mossman) (05/02/90)

Last year I got some really good results with my Canon AE-1 and some Mac
screens.

I took an old manila folder, cut a rectangle in the middle that was just
a little bit smaller than the screen of my Mac+, spray painted it with
flat black paint and taped it to the front of the Mac.  I needed the small
size to hide the menu bar.

I then put my AE-1 on a tripod, centered and leveled it, and shot the pictures.
I used both 1/60 and 1/30 of a second, and let the autoexposure pick the 
f-stop.  I also tried it with both a flash and without.  The shots without 
the flash (but with plenty of ambient light coming in through a window that 
didn't shine on the screen) worked best.  The ones with a flash caused a 
white streak across the slide.

I don't know whether the ones shot at 1/60 were better than the ones at 1/30,
but my new Canon EOS says to use 1/30 (and I never argue with a computer).

Good luck!
-- 
Richard K. Mossman  {bellcore,sun,ames,pyramid}!pacbell!rkm
415/823-0974
=========================================================================
The worst day skiing ...  is always made better by discount lift tickets.

robertt@hpvcfs1.HP.COM (Bob Taylor) (05/03/90)

Shutter speed can be very important - you actually want something relatively
slow.  I don't know what the scan rate for mac monitors is, but a longer
exposure (probably greater than 1/30 - something like 1/8) would insure that
you didn't catch any screen drawing "dead spots" - if you've seen wierd looking
monitors in a movie before, you know what I'm talking about.

bob taylor
HP Vancouver