hi guys and welcome to the last episode of our photography series
in the last episode I covered equipment and settings
in this video I'm going to share my technique for getting all the standard shots and I'll
give you loads of tips along the way to make it as easy as possible let's get right into it
by now you should have all the settings for both portraits and intra-oral shots which we discussed
in the last episode so let's start with portraits you can hang a black theater cloth or a blackout
blind on the back of your door or just ask your nurse to hold it behind the patient if possible
both you and the patient should be sat on a chair so that you can adjust your height to be at eye
level to the patient there should be roughly one and a half meters distance between you set
your camera settings to the ones you worked out from the previous video and hold the camera in
portrait mode ask your patient to look straight into the lens and take the photo using autofocus
now moving on to the intra or photographs change your settings to the intro or ones
you found earlier and change your focus to manual for the basic intraoral photographs you should set
the focus ring to one to three this means you don't turn the focus ring to focus on the tooth
rather you move your body in and out until the tooth is in focus the reason we do this is that
so we can control the size of the picture if you always take your basic intraoral photos
with a one to three magnification ratio your before and after photos will consistently look
the same size but if you move the focus ring and take them with a different magnification ratio
the two images will be different sizes and you will have to crop one of them for all your basic
intraoral photos like the anterior side view and occlusal use a magnification ratio of one
to three for your posterior quadrant photos or close-up photos of the palatal or lingual surfaces
use a magnification ratio of one to one point five the key here is consistency if you prefer
you can just take all your photos at one to three or you might prefer to take all your posterior
quadrant photos at one to two it doesn't matter as long as you stick to that magnification ratio
for your before and after photo you should also turn on the modeling light if your flash has one
this lights up the area as you're trying to take the photo so you can see better and makes it
much easier to focus this might be a bit annoying for your patient so ask them to close their eyes
now in terms of patient positioning i like to get the patient to sit in the dental chair
and i raise the chair up to a height that's comfortable so i'm not bending over too much
and so that my camera is parallel to the surface of the anterior teeth now a mistake that most
people make is that they ask the patient to rest their head on the headrest this actually
makes it harder and when you take a photo their occlusal plane is going in the wrong direction
it makes them look sad you should ask your patient to look straight at you which usually means they
have to tilt their head a bit to the right and ask them to tilt their chin down if needed until you
can see the occlusal plane is going naturally upwards once you're happy with the positioning
move your whole body slightly back and forth in a rocking motion until you see the lateral incisors
are in focus once you're in focus take the shot as you get more and more experienced this should
be very quick when you ask your patient to smile they can normally hold the natural smile for only
a few seconds any longer and their muscles start to fatigue and the smile looks unnatural and
forced if you need to ask the patient to close have a rest and then try again this way you'll
get a more natural smash rock now before i move on to the next shot i'd really appreciate it if
you gave this video a thumbs up it really helps our channel grow and reach more people thank you
next i like to get the retractors in and ask the patient to hold them
i prefer my patients hold them because they know best themselves how tight to pull because they can
feel it sometimes nurses can be too gentle so you won't get the best retraction ask the patient to
hold the retractors outwards towards the camera as well if you don't do this you tend to get bowing
of the upper lip which shows up in your photo when you're ready to take the picture ask the patient
to bite and breathe in and i take the photo using the exact same principles as the last photo
breathing in helps prevent these air bubbles in the interproximal regions but if they still show
you can generally dry the teeth with a cotton wool or a three in one spray ask the patient to
slightly open so you can see the incisal edges of the upper and lower teeth and take the shot
if you're planning to do work on the anterior teeth this would be the time to take pictures with
a contraster ask the patient to hold the retractor slightly upwards so you pull the upper lip higher
place the contraster in the mouth parallel to the upper occlusal plane and then slightly tilt it
down so that the contrast that isn't touching the insides or edges if the contrast that is too close
to the incisal edges you might get the reflection of the teeth instead of a pure black background if
you went down the route of setting your flash on ttl automatic mode which we discussed in
the last video you might struggle with contrast the shots because the camera will see the black
contraster and think it will need lots of flash to lighten up and your photo ends up being too bright
my advice would be to shoot with manual flash settings or change the flash exposure compensation
setting on your camera to minus one or minus two you will need to look at your camera manual
on how to change the setting the exact same principles apply for the lower shot with the
contraster just ask the patient to pull slightly downwards to pull the lower lip out the way
for the lateral views i asked the patient to tilt their head towards one side and pull the
retractor harder on the side facing me and relax the cheek retractor on the other side again
pay attention to the angle of the patient's head and ask them to tilt their head up or down if you
need the occlusal plane to look right then you want to move in and out until the second premolar
is in focus and take the shot do the same for the other side now if you find you're not able to get
the last molars and this is something you want to capture then you will need to use the buckle
mirror to get these buckle shots firstly if you're going to use a mirror you need to prevent it from
fogging up in the patient's mouth easiest way is to warm up your mirror with warm water before
you start taking photos another method is to have your nurse blow air from your three-in-one spray
onto the mirror and if all fails you can ask your patient to hold their breath or take a deep breath
through their mouth as you're taking a photo even if i have warmed my mirror i generally tell my
patients to breathe in and out through the nose when i'm taking photos now when using mirrors you
can either ask your nurse to place them in and you can guide them or you can hold the mirror
yourself depending on how comfortable you feel and how light your camera setup is you can decide if
you're able to practice and get used to holding the mirror yourself then i think you should it
means you'll be able to consistently take photos yourself without having to rely on your nurse
knowing how and where to hold the mirror because they can't see what you can see on the camera so
it's actually very difficult for them if you don't guide them properly so again ask the patient to
pull the retractor with more tension on the side you're taking the photo place the mirror parallel
to the buckle corridor and then tilt it outwards so that the mirror is at a 45 degree angle
to the tee once the mirror is in place it might be easier to ask the patient to remove the retractor
on that side so you can tilt the mirror properly try to avoid resting the mirror on the alveolar
ridge because it can be quite uncomfortable for the patient so try to get ready quick and take the
photo at a 45 degree angle so you have an ideal 90 degree angle to the teeth and do the same on
the other side now whilst the patient is in this position you can take the lower lingo shots at
the same time you can either use this side of the buccal mirror or this side of a lingua mirror for
this shot the curve on this mirror helps you place the mirror lingually and stops the mirror catching
on the incisors for these shots you might want to change the magnification ratio to one to two
so you don't have to do too much cropping after so slide the mirror in between the teeth and
the tongue and go all the way to the retromolar pad and angle the mirror towards the canine and
push the tongue out the way then take the shot now since the mirror is in this position it's
convenient to just tilt the mirror upwards so you can get the upper palatal shots on the same side
and do the same on the other side for both the lingual and the palatal shot
at this point the only photos that are left are the occlusal and posterior quadrant photos and
for these it's much easier to have the patient laying flat and at a low height and set your
magnification ratio back to one to three for the occlusal shots you can either carry on using
retractors but i find it difficult to get their mirrors in so i prefer to use lip retractors like
this one this makes sure that the lip doesn't roll over the occlusal surface of the teeth
once the patient is flat ask them to tilt the chin upwards and open wide one of the main reasons most
people struggle with occlusal shots is that they don't have the patient completely flat
at a low height and they don't ask the patient to tilt their chin so their view is very limited
so make sure you follow these steps next put the lip retractor in and place the mirror in as far
back as possible near the maxillary tuberosity and tilt the mirror as much as possible my advice for
these shots would be to just look at the mirror and make sure you can see with your eyes what
you want to capture properly before bringing the camera to your eyes it's very difficult to adjust
or instruct your nurse when you're looking through the viewfinder when the position of the mirror is
correct and it looks great to your eyes then bring up the camera and take the photo when taking these
occlusal shots don't have super high expectations of capturing the wisdom teeth or the second molars
a good occlusal view should capture up to the distal of the first molar it's much easier to
capture the occlusal surface of the second and third molars in the posterior quadrant photos
now for the lower occlusal again ask the patient to tilt their chin up open wide and get the lip
retractors in if possible ask them to put their tongue up to the roof of their mouth and get their
mirror in to prevent the tank from going on the occlusal surface of the molars this might be too
uncomfortable for some patients in that case just ask them to relax their tongue place the mirror as
far back as the retromolar pad and tilt the mirror as much as the patient allows then take the shot
with this one you want to be fairly quick because it's quite uncomfortable for the patient
at this point you can switch to the buckle or lingo mirror to get the posterior quadrant photos
set your magnification ratio to 1 to 1.5 and get the retractors back in ask the patient to
move their tongue to the roof of their mouth and place them around as far back as the retromolar
pad again and tilt as much as possible and take the shot do the same on the other side and then
move back behind the patient to take the upper posterior quadrant shot when taking these shots
the positioning of the mirror is very important you want the mirror to be at a 45 degree angle
and angled so that you can see the occlusal surfaces of the teeth if you angle it poorly you
end up getting more of a palatal view or lingual view which you don't want and that was it for this
series guys i hope you found it useful a lot of effort went into this series so if you enjoyed it
please give the video a like and subscribe if you have any questions put it down in the comments and
we'll get back to you if you guys want to see more advanced dental photography like this put
it in the comments and maybe i can make a video about that as well thank you all for watching take