TL; DR (SUMMARY) 

Taking photographs for photogrammetry can be a complicated process. As long as you keep the following fundamental ideas in mind, your work will benefit:

•    Decide first how to deal with specimens that you need to move to photograph completely:  either aim to have the alignment performed only on the features found on the specimen  -7 blank the background, or use a highly structured background useful for alignment -7 add markers on the specimen so you can align partial models easily.

•    If re-shooting a specimen later will be difficult or costly, always add a structured background and markers.

•    Add a scaling object (scale bar, markers with known distance on object, etc.).

•    Take in focus, well-lit photographs with as high-quality a camera as you can get.

•    Cover all the surface of your specimen with much overlap between photographs.

•   Mask  thoroughly  (if  appropriate  for  your alignment and model building method).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Financial support to OW was provided by the Europasaurus-Project. Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. HM received funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Project SCHW 1452/3-1), and thanks Matteo Belvedere (MfN) for extensive help in perfecting photogrammetric techniques and for a pre- submission review. We especially thank Stuart Pond and Mathew Wedel (as reviewers) and Peter Falkingham (as editor) for very helpful comments on the initial submission of this manuscript. The Journal of Paleontological Techniques furthermore acknowledges the assistance of The Curry Fund of the Geologist's Association for the publication of this paper.

Back                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Next