hi guys and welcome to the second episode of the photography series where I'm going to
show you how to figure out all the different settings for your setup in the last episode
I talked about all the different equipment you need for dental photography so if you
don't have your setup yet go check out that video and in the next video I'll show you
my techniques for actually taking the photos so like and subscribe so you don't miss out
on that there are timestamps down below if you want to skip around but let's get right into it
so before we jump into the settings inside the camera there's something you need to adjust on
the outside and that's the diopter this little dial usually next to the viewfinder adjusts the
viewfinder to suit your eyes turn the camera on put it on auto mode and point it at something with
text look through the viewfinder and adjust the dial until all the text and icons on the screen
are sharp and that's it now let's move on to the camera settings with all the settings i'm going to
mention today the main goal is to find the perfect settings that works for your camera and flash
so you just set it up once and you never have to tinker with it again we also want to make sure all
your photos look consistent and the only way to do this is to manually control all the settings
most tutorials or guides out there just give you the settings to use as if it will definitely work
with your setup but the truth is the settings you use might need to be slightly tweaked for
the setup that you have my goal in this video is to explain the settings so you have the basic
understanding of what they do and then i'll give you the settings to use as a starting point and
i will give you advice on how to tweak them depending on how your photos are coming out
one setting which will always need to stay the same is the white balance this tells the camera
how blue or yellow the light is because we're going to be using flashes we need to set the white
balance to flash cameras usually have a default white balance on automatic and this means your
camera will decide the white balance itself and this is where you can get inconsistent before and
after photos another setting which i recommend you change if you're a bit more advanced is to
change the file save type from jpeg to jpeg and raw this means it will save both file types every
time you take a photo the advantage of having a raw file is that you can use the photos to submit
for rewards if needed but more importantly if you mess up and take a photo that's a bit too dark you
can edit the photo afterwards on your laptop and bring up the brightness this is best done on a raw
file because the file size is much larger so the software has much more data to work with so the
three main settings you want to control in your camera are the iso the aperture and the shutter
speed these three things impact the exposure of your shot which is basically how bright or how
dark your image looks so let's start with iso this is how sensitive the camera sensor is to
light the higher the number the more sensitive and the brighter your image will be but this increase
in sensitivity comes at the cost of noise which makes your photos look grainy and this is why
in dental photography we have these flashes which help give lots of light so we can keep the iso as
low as possible so our photos don't look grainy so the recommended iso is 100 the lowest it can
go but just remember for troubleshooting if you increase the iso your photos will look brighter
next is the aperture this is how wide or narrow the opening of your lenses
and it's measured in f-stops as the f number increases the opening gets smaller and so less
light is let in but the advantage of the smaller opening is that you will have more teeth in focus
so with dental photography we want a high f number which gives you a very small aperture and a deep
depth of field this will make sure as many of the teeth are in focus as possible if you've
ever taken a photo and maybe just the incisors are in focus and the posterior teeth are all blurry
it's probably because your aperture setting is wrong the recommended aperture for portraits is
f11 and for intra-oral photos is f22 i generally don't recommend changing the setting too much
when troubleshooting because i think you can fix most issues by changing the other settings
the last setting is shutter speed this is how long the camera sensor is exposed to light
and is measured in seconds so a shutter speed of 1 means the sensor is absorbing light for 1 second
a shutter speed of 1 over 2 means half a second so the bigger the number in the denominator the
shorter the camera sensor is exposed to light which means your photo will look darker so big
number equals darker small number equals lighter the recommended starting point is one over two
hundred that's one two hundredth of a second but you can adjust it if you need your photos
to be brighter but i wouldn't suggest taking the denominator to any number lower than 125 because
your photos might start to look shaky because of motion blur if your hands are not steady enough
so here is a summary of the starting settings for the camera on the screen i'm referring to them as
starting settings because you may have to tweak them slightly and i'll talk about that later in
the video now before i move on to talking about the flash settings i'd really appreciate it if
you guys gave the video a thumbs up it really helps our channel grow and reach more people
thank you so next you want to set up your flash as i mentioned in the last video the flash is
the most important part of how your photos look and the way we set up can play a massive role
have you ever looked through instagram and you see before and after photos of a whitening case
and the after photo just looks completely brighter than the before photo and it makes you question
the legitimacy of the case i mean look at the difference in the brightness of the gums in these
photos that can happen if you use a different iso shutter speed or aperture settings for each photo
but most commonly it's because you have your flash on ttl mode
which is basically automatic mode in this mode as you press the shutter button to take the photo
the camera tries to decide how much light it needs and it automatically sets the power of your flash
this is where you can get inconsistent photos because each time you take a photo
the camera might decide a different flash strength especially if the before and after
photos are taken on different days in a different room with a different amount
of light i appreciate setting the flash on ttl mode might be the easiest and if you're really
not bothered about consistency and prefer to have an easier method then go ahead and
set your flash to ttl mode but if you want to make sure you have consistent photos you need
to use manual settings on your flash this just requires one session of practicing taking photos
with your nurse or even a family member just to figure out the exact flash settings you need
so to start figuring out all the settings for your flash set your camera settings to the one on the
screen as mentioned before these are your ideal starting settings and hopefully you won't have
to change them much start with the settings for the portrait view set your flash to manual mode
and put it on full power one to one put your lens in auto focus mode and take a photo most likely it
will be too bright so bring down the power of your flash by one setting your flash might do this in
halves or thirds then retake the photo and assess keep going until you find out which power level
is suitable that's your flash power level for portraits now put your lens in manual focus mode
and turn the focus ring to one to three in the next video i'll be talking in a lot more detail
about this focus ring and the magnification ratio which is this one to three setting do the same for
your intra or shots set the camera setting to the one on the screen and start taking photos
reducing the power of your flash as needed what you will find is that the power of your
flash will be the same for all your intraoral shots so once you've figured out for just the
standard anterior shots you should make a note of it and that will be the power setting you can use
for the rest of your intraoral shots hopefully if all went well you should now have your settings
for both portraits and intra-oil photos and if you do that's great but sometimes what will happen is
that one flash setting will be too bright then you take it down by one setting and now the photo is
too dark so here is a troubleshooting guide if at full power your flash is too dark which is quite
unlikely because the flashes i recommended in the first part of this series are quite powerful
but if it is then you should think about changing some of the camera settings change shutter speed
from 1 over 200 to one over one six five if you remember from before this means your camera
sensor will be exposed to light longer and so will brighten up your image if it's still too
dark try one over one two five if it's good stick with that but if one over one two five is now too
bright go back to one over 165 which will be too dark but change the iso from 100 to 200 and if you
remember from before increasing the iso increases the sensitivity of the sensor to light so it
makes your photos a bit brighter this is why it's important for you to have a basic understanding of
these settings so you can change them to find out what works for your setup once you figure out once
you're good to go and taking photos will be so much easier when troubleshooting stick to changing
the flash strength shutter speed and iso because if you change the aperture you might make focusing
a little bit harder and you might be focusing on fewer teeth at a time if i had to give you an
order i would say always try to change the flash power if that doesn't help change the shutter
speed but don't go any longer than one over one two five and if that still doesn't help change the
iso pause on the screen now for a little reminder of how these settings will affect your photo
so that was everything for settings I know it was a lot but if you have any questions put it down
in the comments a lot of effort has gone into this series so if you enjoyed this episode please give
the video a like and subscribe so you don't miss out on the next episode in the next video I'll
be covering how to actually take these photos and the techniques that I use thank you for watching