How would you take a picture of your monitor?

[killerkebab]

As title? Viewsonic say they want pictures so I may show them that the colours are totally messed up on my screen, but I have no idea what the best way to program a camera to see what my eyes see.

Since I'll be pointing it straight at a very bright light source (the TFT itself) what is the best way to make it all stand out and make sure any corruption is visible?

[petemc]

Put the camera into auto and point it at the screen. You should get a photo. If you get banding I think you need to either make the shutter speed slower or faster than the refresh rate.

[killerkebab]

That won't show fine details, my problem is certain shades of colours don't show up correctly. Like the grey on these forums which is a background of our avatars has pink 'lines' going down it wherever that shade of grey appears. Think scanlines but vertical, so I'd need a pretty detailed shot of the monitor to show this...

... not to mention this doesn't happen to every colour :/

The main thing is because the monitor is a light source the entire camera 'tones down', so to speak, which means the entire picture is dark. My guess is this is much like when you look into a bright light and your pupils go smaller. How can I sort this on a digital camera?

[killerkebab]

I think I've got my phone showing the detail fine, but I don't know how to sell this to viewsonic. The pictures look incriminating enough on my screen, but of course since my screen is busted for all I know it is showing me what I want to see.

Pic1 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/KillerKebab/Desk/Photo-0042.jpg)
Pic2 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/KillerKebab/Desk/Photo-0040.jpg)
Pic3 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/KillerKebab/Desk/Photo-0041.jpg)

Here (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/KillerKebab/Desk/RubikSapphire1600.jpg) is the original background so you can see what the colours should be.

The other two pictures are based on a white background. Do the pictures look wrong in any way? In this case, the monitor seemed to be showing grey lines going down the screen.

[kaiowas]

Can't really see anything wrong with the first picture other than the background looks like it's been reduced to 256 colours or something, the colour fade isn't as graduated as it should be. Not sure if this is just down to the camera though.

Can definitely see the vertical lines on the white background picture though, especially on pic3 (there are fine lines across the whole screen as well as 3 lines of thicker banding even spaced out across the screens width)