With a fast‐gated camera, synchrotron light was used for studying the transverse beam distributions and damping times in the Stanford Linear Collider (SLC) damping rings. By digitizing the image in the camera signal, the turn‐by‐turn time evolution of the transverse beam distribution was monitored and analyzed. The projections of the digitized image were fit with Gaussian functions to determine the moments of the distribution. Practical applications include the determination of injection matching parameters and the transverse damping times. In this report we describe a synchrotron light monitor and present experimental data obtained in the SLC damping rings.