Dental photography hardware

This article gives some recommendations for the right technical equipment, in other words the suitable hardware for dental photography. Whether digital compact cameras are adequate or not is something everyone ultimately has to decide for themselves. The key factor is usually achieving the right cost/benefit ratio.

If you want to approach things correctly, you will not be able to avoid using a single lens reflex camera. A beginner’s model from a well-known manufacturer like Canon or Nikon will certainly be adequate. These are very convenient to use, lightweight cameras and the technical equipment supplied with a professional photographer’s model would in fact be superfluous for dental photography – unless user wishes to take further high quality images outside the field of dental technology and dentistry.

With the housing alone, of course, you cannot yet take any photos. You will need a lens. Macro lenses with a focal length of about 100 mm have proved successful for out purposes. Whether it’s 90mm or 105mm is not really important. With these cameras you still have a distance acceptable to the patient for taking mouth shots. This equipment allows you to take photos on the 1:1 scale.

Now you need the correct light. For the images to have sufficient depth of field, you will have to work with a small shutter (large number). The aperture is then reduced to a small hole when taking the picture so that little light falls on the sensor and the image is underexposed. This effect is prevented by using a flash. The flash should be mounted close to the front element of the lens in order to optimally illuminate the close-up region. Ring or lateral flashes are available for this purpose. Beginners are recommended to use a ring flash.

Now we’ve got our basic dental photography hardware together. One interesting aspect is naturally the cost of this dental photography hardware. Branded cameras for beginners currently have a price tag of about 500 €. For a macro lens you will pay about 800€ for a Nikon and about 700€ for a Canon. Prices are more favourable with other manufacturers such as Sigma, Tamron etc. These manufacturers often offer quality which is just as good but at a more reasonable price. The same applies for the flash units. Here I can recommend a ring flash from Sigma which costs about 360 €. For original branded models you will pay 2 to 3 times as much.