These are the fruit of Eucalyptus gomphocephala (Tuart) is endemic to coastal regions of Western Australia from Ludlow to Jurien Bay. Individual capsules on this specimen are ~16 millimetres in diameter × 15 millimetres long. More information on this species can be found on the Euclid site.
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@phaneritic The only lighting is the two LED light strips that came with the light tent. Exposure times are typically ~0.5 second. When I first started doing this I was getting away with less than 50 images - but they were less intricate objects like rock specimens. When I first joined a facebook group on photogrammetry, I was puzzled as to why people were shooting up to 1000 images for an object this size. And then I realised they were using focus stacking - unnecessarily in my book. As you say it can be a great time sink! I have thought about an automated setup, but I prefer to have more control over things. I tend to make subtle focus adjustments in between shots when necessary. The camera is hooked directly into the PC using software called Image Transmitter - it has a feature called focus peaking which is very handy.
@Landy42 Wow! That's pretty great for only 72 images. Do you have really strong lighting sources to compensate for needed shutter speeds at F32, or do you just go for 1-2sec exposures? I'm working on obtaining an automated turntable that talks to the camera and processes focus stacking all in one go. Works out manually, but what a time sink.
Keep up good work!
@phaneritic thanks for the question! I use a Pentax K3 Mkiii and a 50mm macro, along with a light tent, manual turntable and of course a tripod. This model was 72 images - 4 rounds of 18 shots. Models are built with Agisoft Metashape. I have managed to avoid focus stacking for any of my models so far - I just shut the lens right down to F32. When I tell people that, the usual response is "what about diffraction?" - but in my experience, diffraction softening is a vastly overrated issue. The processing software that comes with Pentax has corrections for it anyway, which take into account the circle of confusion. In my book, the benefits of increased depth of field far outweigh the downside of the diffraction 'problem' - without it I would need to take 10× the amount of images!
Excellent! What does your current model capture set-up look like? Macro and focus-stacking? Auto subject rotation?