As the limit of traditional contact measurement, it is difficult to precisely measure the steel cables twisted by a branch of wires especially at elevated temperature. In this paper the strain-stress relationships of S355 and S690 structural steel, 1860 MPa steel cable twisted by seven wires have been measured by the strain gauge, extensometer and non-contact video gauge at ambient temperature and elevated temperature, respectively. Comparison of the stress-strain curves gotten by different measuring technology, it indicates that the non-contact video gauge can provide a more efficient and reliable database than the strain gauge as well as extensometer, especially at an elevated temperature. It is worth noting that the non-contact video gauge can capture not only the full range of stress-strain curves of steel cables, but is also efficient for the specimens with a complex shape.