Taking pictures of a CRT

[Demon-Xanth]

I need to take some pictures of some waveforms on a CRT, because of the source of the display, I can't just freeze the display.

The tools I have:
Canon A520
mini-tripod
cardboard box
15" VGA CRT

What settings should I use for best results? And is there anything else I can do to keep blurring and glare down to a minimum?

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

So these are moving waveforms? Taking pictures of a CRT is tough because of the refresh rate. If you don't have your shutter speed slow or fast enough you'll probably get the horizontal bar across the screen as you take the photo while the screen is refreshing.

I think the best that you can do is set your ISO to something high but still acceptable - 800 maybe. Then open your aperture up as wide as it can go - f/2.6 or so. Take the picture, if the waveform is blurry, turn down the AE (AutoExposure) compensation down into the negative EVs. Try this until you get the waveform frozen. The picture will probably be pretty dark at this point, so you're going to have to lighten it up with software.

 

[Aharami]

been quite a while since the last time I took a pic of a CRT screen, but IIRC, I used to put the camera on a tripod and use long shutter so I dont get those horizontal lines