dental photography | photographic protocol in dentistry

The reasons why digital cameras have succumbed to cell phones are simple and clear to anyone who has tried shooting with a DSLR in manual mode, and even with external light. Every time you change location, the camera and light settings need to be adjusted. It happens not infrequently, a client sends me photos for publication on the site, and they are not sharp, or dark, or on the contrary lighted. The doctor did a total work, filmed the result, but the focus was not in, and that's it, we have to reshoot. It is actually difficult to handle a camera.

Therefore, let's leave the section about cameras to advanced enthusiasts, and look for a simpler solution.

Now when it comes to preparing cases for the website and organizing photo proofs I send my clients a different list of techniques to buy, about 3 times cheaper.

There are many beautiful photos of ceramic crowns, but I have never seen such beautiful residual limbs as Vitaly Ivanchenko's. I think it would be superfluous to say how the patient's attitude towards the orthopedist changes when he has such photos.

Vitaly regularly conducts training in tooth preparation. I think he would make his course even stronger if he added information about how he takes such beautiful photos.

We have come to the topic of choosing a professional light for your camera.
The most important thing in any photography is light.
Look for your light until you get the desired picture.

I will now share my observations on those solutions that are available on the market, show you how bad the standard solutions are and how to come to a beautiful filling light.

Traditionally, dentists have been offered bipolar and ring flashes. In the slides below, I invite you to take a close look at how the pattern changes with standard sources and with increasing flash spacing and softboxes.

I see a lot of doctors working with ring flashes, but you have to realize what the reason for the widespread use of ring flashes is, it's all about price. They are simply the cheapest and give the worst picture. Perhaps for documentary shooting of a single crown this option is suitable, but as soon as you even slightly think about the aesthetics of the frame, you start looking for bipolar flashes and matching softboxes. And in my opinion this is something you should buy right away.

With bipolar flashes it is important to keep two factors in mind. It should be possible to spread them wider and mount softboxes on the flashes. Nikon has the DentalKit, and it has 2 bipolar flashes mounted rigidly to the lens with no way to spread them wider and they have small reflectors that act as softboxes. And we realize that this equates them with a ring flash. We look at the first two frames and we see a similar light pattern. To avoid this, it is important to have devices that will allow you to spread the flashes wider and install light diffusing softboxes on them.

As you can see, the most even fill light without harsh glare comes from spaced bipolar flashes. Let's estimate how much such a set will cost.

Expensive kit, it can be made cheaper by changing the original flashes to analogs, the flash mount can also be assembled on other components. If you set such a task, the cost can be reduced to about 30,000 p.

But there is another way to achieve a beautiful fill light and much cheaper.

Therefore, for quality surgery photography, a third person, the photographer, is involved in the surgery. You should not demand aesthetic pictures from the surgeon. Anesthesia passes, there is a lot of blood, it is important to keep the surgical field clean, there are a lot of tasks, objectively, not up to photography at such a moment.

I would recommend you not to wait for the surgeon to pick up the camera, of all doctors it is the surgeons have the least time for this. You need good shots, ask the second assistant to participate. Absolutely all assistants should know how to operate a camera. When I worked at ZimmerDental and needed pictures from a major surgery, I would come to the surgery and take the pictures myself. And even in this case it slowed down the surgery significantly, because for a good shot I naturally asked the doctor to delay at the right moment, on the lap it significantly added time for the patient under anesthesia.

It is not necessary to photograph the surgery to show patients a clinical case. It is sufficient to take a good photographic protocol of the condition before implantation and after prosthetics and possibly show soft tissue healing. This will remove many questions from patients and encourage them to come to your clinic.

Let's formulate what criteria this light must meet.

Not too big.
Not fixed on the camera so that we can direct it.
soft, so that it fills the entire surgical field with light without shadows.

Dental photography for a camera is a very easy task. You don't have to buy a professional full-frame camera to do the job.

Nevertheless, I bought a full-frame camera for myself, the second one in my practice, because professional cameras are faster, more accurate, allow more in difficult conditions and I shoot everything on it, both portraits, interiors, and the plot, and complex surgical operations.

A good full frame camera gives you a feeling of permissiveness, it can handle everything, even when it's difficult. I got hooked on photography when one day I was given a professional camera with an expensive lens, and wherever I pointed it, I always got beautiful and interesting shots. Instant autofocus, sharp, colorful, with interesting blurred backgrounds, it seems you turned into a professional photographer in an instant. After that, ordinary cameras disappear, you only want to work with such a tool.

And then, I also did this trick many times, I gave a professional camera in the hands of a person and watched how the expression of his face changed, after that you don't want to shoot on average cameras and dark glasses.

Last generation full frame cameras are available now. The Nikon D780 has come out and the D750 has come down in price. It's just a great camera that used to be bought for $2000, but now you can buy it for $1000 off the shelf in good condition. I have such a camera and I shoot everything on it, and training events held by my surgeon friends, and a large 3-hour operation.

If you use Canon and don't want to switch, please, Canon's lineup includes the 5D mark3, a powerful last generation camera that leaves all of today's mid-rangers behind.