A noninvasive, photoconductive sampling technique, which does not require short‐lifetime material to achieve picosecond temporal resolution, is demonstrated. The technique relies on electromagnetic coupling to generate the time derivative of the signal of interest in a separate sampling circuit. A slow photoconductive device in the sampling circuit integrates the coupled signal to produce the desired wave form. A 5‐ps sampling response (limited only by circuit parasitics) was measured on GaAs with a lifetime of 1 ns by coupling to a small conducting loop. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.