Speckle photography is a simple non-contacting method for analysing surface displacement. In its basic form, the object to be studied is illuminated with a beam of laser light from any convenient direction, and a double exposure photography of the surface recorded on the fine-grain film, the object is undergone the displacement to be measured between exposures. Like this, it allows the strain field to be evaluated in two dimensions. A direct experimental comparison of speckle photography with theoretical value on a notched tensile test specimen showed that serious errors could, however, occur due to local surface tilting and due to aberra- tions of the imaging lens. Methods of minimising these effects and those of the speckle de-correlation which occurs by the various conditions are discussed.