setting up portraits ~

This is one of those rare but happy occasions when my core training business, teaching digital imaging in dental clinics and labs, intersects with my studio photography interests. I was invited to make portraits for the Clark County (Washington) Dental Association to use on their Members website. I've worked with dental professionals all around the country for several years now, and alway have fun with projects like this.

The set-up is pretty straight forward, and one that I sometimes set up for clinics to use for their own client portraits, something pretty common with the higher-end family and cosmetic practices. Good clinical intra-oral photos are a standard in any practice, but a really well made portrait that shows the beautiful results of cosmetic or restorative dentistry really sets a successful practice apart from others. There's real artistry in both endeavors.

Making a good head-and-shoulders portrait for business & web is a common project, but one that still needs your creative chops. When I teach studio lighting, I try to convey that it's an important fundamental, and the starting point from which to let your imagination take off.
Isn't that what it's all about?

How are you making portraits in your practice? Or if you're having problems with this, let me know and we'll find solutions together.

Later!    Dave

Macro Lens = Portrait Lens ~

I had an interesting conversation with a client recently who was wondering why her full-face portrait shots were always a little disappointing.  It wasn't anything dramatic, and was hard to pin-point just what exactly was the problem; they just "never looked right".

But the problem turned out to be a common one: she believed her 100mm Macro lens was usable only for intraoral shots, and nothing else. Her Canon Rebel, as is often the case, came with an 18-55mm general-purpose zoom lens, and she was using this for her portrait shots. This is a good lens for a lot of things, but portraits is not among them. The reason? This zoom lens is very "short" (i.e., wide-angle) and while scenics are great, portraits are distorted, and it was this distortion that caused the images to look disappointing. Let's look closely at this:

This is how a full-face shot will look when you use that zoom lens (or any similar lens that comes with your camera). In this case, the zoom focal length was set on 18mm, its widest setting. Notice how greatly distorted it looks. In fact, to get the face to fully fill the frame, I had to shoot about 2 or 3 inches away from her nose. Obviously un-usable.



For this next one, I set that zoom lens to its 35mm focal length, so I wouldn't have to stand so close to her. It's an improvement, but not by very much. It still looks much too distorted.

When the lens is set at 55mm focal length, its longest, the image starts to look more appealing. Although there is much less  distortion, it's still there.

But here, with the 100mm Macro lens, the portrait looks excellent. There's none of the distortion caused by using the shorter zoom lens. In fact, outside the opertory, this very same Macro lens is an excellent one for many kinds of photographic projects. It's wonderfully sharp and fast. So take it outside and have fun with it. After all, of all the tools you use in your practice, your camera is the only one you can say that about!

Being an Informed Consumer ~

This topic is near and dear to my heart: how to be an informed consumer when shopping for your camera gear, whether in a retail store or website. It's one of the most common subjects of the emails and phone calls I receive. There are so many pro-quality digital camera systems out there, and most salespeople won't really have a clear idea of your dental imaging needs.

There are a couple of big misconceptions about digital cameras that the consumer (& even some salespeople!) can fall prey to: First, the more expensive the camera, the better pictures it takes, and Second (usually related to this), higher mega-pixels = better pictures. Neither of these is inherently true.

So what are the things you'd find on a camera like this $7000 Canon 1Ds Mk III? It's a wonderful camera with the kinds of features needed by the professional shooter: a huge 21 mp sensor for the commercial photographer, a fast 5 frames-per-second burst rate for the sports shooter, a full-frame sensor for the outdoor scenic shooter. Crucial for them, yes, but none of which applies to your imaging needs in the opertory.

What you do need is a light-weight, simple to operate camera that will produce blazingly sharp, color-accurate images every time you shoot. Fortunately, there's a lot of great ones to choose; from Canon, the Digital Rebels: T3, T2i & T3i, ranging from around $550 to $900 for the body. From Nikon: the D3100, D5100, & D90, in the same price range.  Even though moderately priced, they still have very sophisticated sensors ranging from around 12 to 18 mega-pixels. No slouches these!

So, you can put together a complete system -- camera, macro lens, & ringflash -- for a fraction of what just a high-end pro camera body would cost. Read back on some of my earlier posts here about those components. Remember, a quality lens has much more to do with making a superb image than the number of light-gathering pixels on the sensor!
There are excellent photo retailers and reputable on-line suppliers out there; email me if you'd like to know more about some of them. Need some hands-on guidance to learn how best to use them? Let me  know ~ we'll get together!  
                                                   dhutt@dmddigitalphoto.com

Workshop @ Gnathodontics!

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my work is conducting shade-matching workshops at some of the country's best dental labs. Last week we had just such an occasion at Gnathodontics, LTD in Lakewood Colorado. Wonderful facilities and expertly organized; I look forward to working with them in the future. Pictured here are Stephen Mott, CDT,  the lab's co-owner & Implant Dept. Manager on the left, and John Bozis, Customer Relations, Sales & Marketing Mgr in the center. Many thanks also to Carmen Nicholas, Master Ceramist.  This is a really great team.

It was interesting to see some Nikon users at this workshop. The lab itself was using the D90, and there was a D3100 as well. The Nikon camera, coupled with the 105mm f2.8 AF-S VR Macro lens and the R1 Speedlight makes a formidable, but moderately priced, system.

One of my main objectives over the years has been to help dental professionals be informed consumers when it comes to purchasing their digital photography systems. It's common for them to over-buy, that is, end up with a camera that has far more features and capabilities - and thus far more expensive - than actually needed for their intraoral and shade-matching photography. This is why cameras such as the Nikon D90, the D3100, and even the new D5100, are such good choices: excellent image quality and economically priced. There are also great choices from Canon in their Digital Rebel series of cameras.
Are you in the process of purchasing your new camera system? Send me a note if you have any questions. I'd be glad to answer any questions you might have. I've bought a camera or two in my time!  dhutt@dmddigitalphoto.com 

Great Workshops!

This has been a really busy month ~ two workshops here at home in Portland, one more next week in Denver. It was nice, as I rarely get to stay home for these. First, my very biggest thanks to Davis Dental Lab for their work in organizing this workshop and providing some wonderful refreshments that evening. As usual with the dental lab, the focus for the attending dentists was on shade-matching photography.

The first half of this workshop is a really eye-opening discussion on the nature of color itself, and the inherent difficulties involved in color perception. These issues become critical when we try to communicate our perception of color to the dental lab, resulting all too often in costly re-makes. It's amazing, and a little scary, just how fluid our color perception can be, and how so many internal and environmental factors affect us.

The second half illustrates how we use digital photography to address these issues and make it possible for us to communicate color information to the lab much more effectively. Now it's our turn to be amazed at how easily we can make this technology work in simplifying and streamlining the photographic process. The right equipment -- digital SLR camera, macro lens, and ringflash -- are discussed in detail: settings, file formation, monitor calibration, and more. And of course a lot of time to do some real hands-on practicing.

I then presented a workshop on the general use of digital photography to a group of Speech Pathologists in Vancouver Washington.  It was fascinating for me to work with this group of professionals for the first time. They had similar issues of documenting intraoral pre and post-treatment dental procedures related to therapeutic applications. I hope to work more with these practitioners.


Next up: October 14 in Lakewood Colorado, another shade-matching workshop at Gnathodontics, Ltd. I love getting back to Colorado, one of my favorite places any time of year. Click on their link if you'd like to know more about the workshop.

Or drop me a line -- right here at home in Oregon. Also one of my favorite places! dhutt@dmddigitalphoto.com 

What is "Depth-of-Field"?

We photographers are always throwing around photo-speak terms, figuring that everyone knows what we're talking about. Some of these concepts can be baffling to the non-photographer, but that doesn't minimize their importance. Depth-of-Field is one of these.  In a nut-shell, depth-of-field describes the degree of acceptable sharpness in an image beyond, and in front of, the actual point of focus. An image with deep depth-of-field -- in a landscape, say, or a retracted smile -- looks sharply focused throughout. One with shallow depth-of-field, as in a portrait, will have a sharply defined subject standing out against a soft, blurry background. So it is something we can control and manipulate. With few exceptions, in intraoral photography we want as much depth-of-field as we can, otherwise our pictures end up with a somewhat "out of focus" appearance.
Look at these two diagrams:

Picture your macro lens -- probably it's maximum aperture (f/stop) is f2.8. That's as large as the lens opening can go. Its minimum aperture is f22 or f32; its smallest opening. Notice that when you shoot "wide open" you get very little depth-of-field, an effect even more pronounced with a macro lens. Depth-of-field increases as the size of the lens opening (actually its diaphram) decreases. Let's look at these samples:

Taken at widest opening, f/2.8 with my 100mm Macro

Taken at f8

Taken at f/32

In each case I was focusing on the very same spot, the 6th shade tab. There is practically no depth-of-field at f2.8, so although the tab I focused on is sharp as a tack, the image overall looks out of focus. At f8 we see a good deal more sharpness, but still a lot of fall-off at the extreme front and back. But at f32, the image overall looks acceptably sharp.

When I teach my workshops, I recommend that every shot be made at f32. We let our TTL flash do all the work of giving us correct exposure each time, and so we can be confident that all of our intraoral imaging will look nice and sharp. It's also a lot easier, and less error-prone, than fiddling around changing our lens setting with each shot!

Make sense? Drop me note. A sharp one, please!

Why Can't I Send A Print To My Lab?

Wow ~ it's been a busy month since I last posted, and a lot has been going on. While thinking about a new topic, I came across a couple emails from some of my client dentists asking why their labs were rejecting color prints for shade-matching, or why their percentage of re-makes were so high when they tried to use prints. A color print, quite obviously, is is a poor tool to use to convey color information to a lab.

But why should this be? After all, you have a fine digital camera and a good lens, and even an excellent color printer. The problem is not in your equipment, but in the print itself and the process of making it. Think of the limitations of that color print: for starters, it holds only a fraction of the color information that you saw on your computer monitor. An ink-jet printer, even under the best of circumstances, cannot reproduce the RGB gamut of your monitor. Plus, there is an enormous range of quality in ink-ink jet papers themselves: cheap or expensive, glossy, matte, and so on; and this all greatly affects print quality and consistency.

Now think about the process you go through to make that print. Your eyes are making decisions based upon what they see in an environment that exerts a lot of influence upon those colors. Not surprisingly, none of those conditions exist in the lab where they're trying to make sense of what you sent them. This is a truly complex subject; my most popular workshop is a 4-hour powerpoint lecture & hands-on that deals exclusively with this!

Clearly, your lab needs that color information provided by some other means. Most labs I work with prefer the images be emailed to them as jpg's. Some are requesting the dentist to actually send the CF or SD memory card itself (to be returned & re-used) so that the technician can open those images on a color-calibrated monitor in a tightly controlled color environment. If you're going to email the images, make sure you check with your lab on how they prefer them to be sent. They may have preferences on size and format, which they'll instruct you on.  Ideally you'll include in the image the shade tab and a neutralizing tab, which further help the lab determine accurate color and shading (as in the samples you see here). But make sure you don't try to "tweak" the image before you send it on. Remember, their monitors are calibrated to ICC standards -- yours are not! But more on that in a later post.

Want more info? Send me an email. And you can tweak it all you want!