Camera Setting to start with.

Required photo's to achieve a shade match. (Teeth have to be hydrated.)

1: Polar-eye's before prep w/ white balance card.

2: Polar_eyes of the prep w/ white balance card.

3: Regular picture with out polar eyes with white balance card.

For the Best results: 

Take regular and polar eyes pictures before prepping. then after prepping take a Polar Eyes picture of the prep. We will create a coping and send it back. Try this coping in and take a Polar Eyes picture of the coping on the prep. This will give us a true reading of LAB to be able to stain properly to match the final LAB number.

Good: 

2 to 3 days after preping and temping bring the patient back in for pictures. Take the regular and and polar eye pictures, then remove the prep and take a polar eye picture of the prep. 

Least:

 Take regular and polar eyes picture before prepping. then take polar eye picture of the prep after your don.

Hydrated Teeth: To get proper LAB numbers, we suggest either taking the pictures before prepping the teeth or 2 to 3 days later after prepping. This will ensure full hydration of teeth  for an accurate recording of LAB numbers.

**Taking pictures after prepping will result in inaccurate LAB numbers and cause the value and possibly chroma to be off. 

Custom shades to succeed, the laboratory and dental office have to use the same camera setting to achieve the best results. Here are the settings I use in my lab and needs to be duplicated in the dental office.

Camera equipment: Digital SLR with ring flash or twin flash.

                              Polar Eyes & White balance card (photomed.com)

(White balance card has to be in all photo's. Half circle towards incisal edge.)

Camera Setting : Manual mode, F22 ,  Shutter 125 ,  Iso 100/200

Flash Setting:    Matisse Polar Eyes with white balance card- both Ring and Twin Flash -Manual 1/1 or 1/2

                  Matisse Regular picture with white balance card : Manual setting Twin Flash 1/8 to1/16

                 Post insert Regular Picture without balance card: Manual setting twin flash and or ring flash :1/8 to 1/16​

Regular picture fllash will need to try to see which setting works best for your camera.
Lens: Set lens to M for manual and at 1-1.5 to1:2. every lens is different. a trick to know the right lens distance is the white balance card fill the lens fro the left to the right.

Ring flash needs to play around sometimes to get the right settings.
Lens: set lens to manual at the distance of 1:5 to 1:2. Basically when you look through the lens, the white balance card fills the view from left to right.

The White Balance Card has a LAB number of L-79, A-0, B-0. We want all the pictures to to be slightly brighter than this. 

All Photo's have to be in RAW format NO JPG 

Camera Batteries need to be fresh to take the pictures. A good indicator if you need to replace the batteries is how long the flash takes to charge ( red light).