what's up guys welcome back to another video on dental photography
now since we released our three-part photography series we've had a lot of questions about using
mirrorless cameras like these for dental photography in this video i'm going to
talk you through a budget setup like this one and an advanced setup like this one all the
settings that you need for your mirrorless cameras and the flashes let's get into it
alright guys so here we have the two different setups this is the budget setup and this is the
one that's a little bit more advanced and more expensive but let's start with the budget setup
and i call it budget but it's just basically the one that's cheaper in the mirrorless world
this is the cheapest setup you're most likely going to be able to get and i appreciate it's
still more expensive than dslrs out there so now with this setup you have a sony a6000 body with a
nissan mf-18 ring flash and for the lens i've gone for a samyang 100 millimeter macro lens which is
actually half the price of the sony lens that you have on the other setup now the main disadvantage
of this lens compared to the other one is that it doesn't have autofocus which doesn't matter
too much because you should only be using manual focus when doing dental photography anyways the
only time i can kind of think of using autofocus is when i'm taking portrait shots but even then
you can still use the manual focus on this lens it just might take you an extra few
seconds to find focus now this setup comes to around one thousand pounds or a thousand five
hundred dollars and as i mentioned i know it's not cheap but it's the cheaper option in this
case so in the more advanced setup here i have a sony a6400 with the sony 90 millimeter macro lens
and the mike twin flashes and all of this is mounted on the owl bracket and these are some
of the diffusers that i made myself you can check out the equipment video that i made before to see
how i made them this setup is more expensive and is around 2 200 pounds or 2 500 but there are a
few main differences between these two setups the first minor difference is between the sony a6000
and the sony a6400 camera bodies as i explained in the first video of the photography series the main
advantage of using these mirrorless cameras for dental photography is the focus peaking now the
focus peaking is when the camera highlights the edges of the areas which you're focusing on so you
don't have to look through the viewfinder to make sure you're in focus you can just move your camera
in and out until you see the dots show around the edges of the teeth and then you can just take your
shot the focus peaking gives you more confidence because when you see those dots on the tooth
you know you're in focus you're not going to doubt yourself and it also means you don't
have to take off your loops which is especially annoying when wearing those massive ffp3 masks
so to get to the point the differences between these two cameras when it comes to focus peaking
is the colors that are available the a6000 has white red and yellow but the a6400 also has blue
the reason blue is so good is that we rarely see anything in the mouth that's blue so when i have
the focus speaking on the a6400 with the blue it's very easy to see the dots but on the a6000 you
have to set it to red which can be more difficult to see because the gingiva and the tongue are also
red now i know this might sound very minor but it can actually make a big difference but one of
the biggest differences is the twin flash on the advanced setup because of the stronger modeling
light the modeling light is the light which is always on when you're preparing to take photos
and it lights up the subject and makes it easier for you to see the teeth and get focused the one
on the twin flash is much stronger and so you get to see much clearer lines and dots of focus
peaking the modeling light helps especially with posterior shots because it brightens up the area
so it's much easier to tell if you're in focus or not however with this flash you need to make sure
you mount it on an owl bracket like this one i tried using it with the mount that comes with
the flash but i struggled because the posterior shots were looking too dark the bracket lets
you bring the flashes very close to the lens and move forward so the light can reach all the way
to the back of the map now the last difference i wanted to mention with these two setups is their
lenses the sony lens as mentioned before has the autofocus but it also has superior optics so the
colors are more accurate and look more natural have a look on the screen at the comparison both
shots were taken with the a6400 and the twin flash setup but i just changed the lenses the skin tones
and colors on the sony lens are much better as you can see the samyang lens tends to give
a yellow hue to the pictures this could be fixed with changing the white balance from the flash to
a custom white balance which i'll show you how to set up later but the colors are still not as good
as the sony as you can see now i know some people might think that these minor advantages for the
more expensive setup just isn't worth the extra thousand pounds or thousand dollars and for most
of you it probably isn't worth it but the reason i like it so much is that it means i can be really
quick at taking consistent higher quality photos so i end up taking more photos every single day
when i'm at work compared to a dslr setup or this ring flash setup with the weaker modeling
light but i know this comes at a premium price tag before i move on to the camera settings i'd
really appreciate it if you guys gave this video a like it really helps our channel grow and reach
more people thank you so now let's move on to the actual settings on the camera so the first setting
you should change is the aspect ratio it's on the first page of the first tab change it to
3x2 this lets you then change the image size to 24 megapixels if you're on the a6400 you should
also change the jpeg quality to extra fine the next setting is the monitor brightness you can
find it on the briefcase menu tab at the end and it's the first option you want to change it to
sunny weather this will significantly brighten up the monitor and help you see much better when
focusing especially in dark areas of the mouth next is the focus peaking settings on the a6000
it's on the second tab on the second page and on the a6400 it's on the first tab on the 13th page
if you're using the nissan ring flash set the peaking level to high or if you're using the
mikey twin flash set it to mid and if you're on the a6000 set the color to red and if you're in
the a6400 set it to blue next you want to turn the dial on your camera and go into manual mode then
from here click the function button to open up the quick settings change the drive mode to single
if you have the sony lens set the white balance to flash but if you have the samyang lens scroll down
to the custom white balance which is labeled c temp filter and set the temperature to 5800 kelvin
this will compensate for the yellow hue of the samyang lens that we talked about before
then click the fn button to leave the menu now you want to set your iso shutter speed and aperture
the settings on the screen is what i have found works best for taking intraoral photographs and
now your camera settings are ready but before you carry on you should actually save these settings
to a preset so it's much quicker for you to get access to them once you have all the settings
ready click the menu button and find the memory option on the a6000 it's on the first tab on the
seventh page and on the a6400 it's on the first tab on the fourth page click on it and it will
show you three different pages and you can select which one you want to register these settings to
in this case pick number one and click enter now those settings we have just set are in the
memory record page number one now the way to get to these settings every time is by turning the
dial on your camera to mr which is memory recall when you do that it brings back up the same menu
and lets you choose between one two and three in this case you are going to select one and click ok
and now we have all the settings that we want this is useful because you can always accidentally
change settings here and there but before i take any intro or photographs i turn my dial into mr
and select page one and i always know that the settings will be correct for my photos
on the second page of my mr settings i've set my portrait settings and you can do the same
so now let's move on to the flash settings for the nissan ring flash i recommend having the flash on
ttl when taking portraits and have it on manual mode for taking intra or photographs for the
manual settings i recommend setting it to quarter power this will be the correct setting most of
the time what i would recommend is when you take photos take a shot look at it if it's too bright
bring it down to 1 8 and if it's too dark bring it up to a half and remember always have your modern
light on when taking photos with this flash you turn it on by holding down the set button now for
the mike twin flash you turn on by holding the power button the flash has two modes slave mode
and master mode and you can switch between them by pressing the power button you want to enter master
mode here you can see you have three groups you can set to set the settings click the group button
a will be highlighted then press in the scroll wheel to enter the group then turn the scroll
wheel until you change the mode to m which is for manual then clicking the scroll wheel again
to move to the next setting which is power turn the scroll wheel to change the power to one over
one which is full power then click the wheel again which lets you pick the focal length of your lens
and change it to 135 millimeters now do the same for group b but change the power to a half and
then for group c change the flash mode to ttl zero and 135 millimeters as you can see on the screen
with this setup 99 of the time i use a the only time i use group c which is the automatic ttl
mode is when i'm trying to get pictures of crowns or dentures outside the mouth now the speed lights
connect to the transmitter automatically when you turn them on and you can see they display
which group they're on because i always use group a i just turn them on and leave it there but you
can change the group using the button here and before taking photos click this button to turn
on the modeling light and use the scroll wheel to make sure it's on 12 which is full power when
i'm taking anterior shots i have the flashes set wide apart like this and when i'm taking
posterior shots i bring them closer to the middle and in front of the lens again this
will let more light reach the back of the mouth and that's it for all the settings i cover the
actual techniques for taking all the shots in the third video of the photography series that we did
so if you haven't watched that video make sure you check it out i'll have a link to all the videos
in the description and all the products that i mentioned today as well will be in the blog post
if you guys found this video useful i'd really appreciate it if you gave the video a thumbs up
and subscribe to our channel if you have any questions make sure you pop them down in the
comments and i'll get back to you as soon as i can thank you guys and see you in the next video