Thanks all. @Oliver, good thinking about the branch wiggle. I tried to arrange the setup such that there was no wiggle, and had even first planned to have the rotation stop and branch settle before each pic, but the acceleration was making things worse, and the constant speed seemed to keep things very stable. Still, it’s possible my eye wasn’t picking up the movement.
Regarding feature size, the section that I’ve highlighted as having gaps is about 5 pixels wide when furthest from the camera, and about 8-9 pixels wide when closest. The image below is from its closest point. Also of note is that it’s not very sharp (how can you be when you’re only 9 pixels wide). I took these photos with f/16, as I wanted to keep the closest branches in focus, and hence wanted to keep DOF as wide as possible.
I suspect that it’s the resolution (i.e. 8 pixels wide) that is giving me trouble. But I’m not really sure. If there is really something about pixel widths, I’ve wondered about artificially increasing the resolution in photoshop (bicubic resampling or whatever).
I’ve also included another example of a probelmatic area. To my eye, the image should be enough for RC to grab onto and make some 3D points. However, it doesn’t. Maybe this will give more clues about what’s going on, and how to remedy it. Thanks again.
allie
another problematic area:
Closeup of the vertical branch section that RC doesn’t register: