The classroom behaviors recorded during three second grade reading lessons provide suitable evidence for comparing the relative merits of using narrative observations versus videotapes as data collection techniques. The comparative analysis illustrates the detail and precision of videotape. Primarily, videotape gives a true picture of linear time, while narrative observation creates the impressions of time "densities," when time seems to speed up or slow down depending on the pace of events and their description. The videotape also records the exact sequences of verbal and nonverbal events, which classroom observers cannot always do. In contrast to videotape recordings, the narrative observer will always have a wider angle of vision than the video camera, viewing a number of events at the same time while recording one particular event. The experienced narrative observer also brings to the classroom a sense of "history" and context that the camera does not have. The observer can usually evaluate intensity and saliency at the time of the event better than a videotape can show later, and is better able to focus on particular students without losing view of the class as a whole. (RL)