Konnarock Formation: a GIGAmacro Cautionary Tale by Robin Rohrback-Schiavone

This was intended to be a GIGAmacro of a lovely sample from the Konnarock Formation in southeastern Virginia. And it is, technically. It is not, however, a successful one.

We encountered three problems with this shoot. The first is inconsistent overlapping, which manifests here as areas that appear to display an unusually tidy asbestiform mineral. Chrysotile, maybe. That one is within our control; it resulted from setting too large a field of view. This was shot with a field of view of 28 mm. For my next trick, I'll shoot it with a 20-mm field of view.

In the stacking process, we discovered a handful of images which seemed to have more than one center of focus. We also discovered a handful which displayed a starburst pattern which, while pretty, is counterproductive. We're working with Gene Cooper to figure out what's going on there. Once we've figured out the problems' causes and solutions, we'll post static images so you can learn from our mistakes.

Note: during stitching, GigaPan Stitch suggested I turn vignette correction off. I told it to leave vignette correction on, but it seems it went ahead and turned it off anyway.

Image made as part of the MAGIC project (Mid-Atlantic Geo-Imagery Collection) using Northern Virginia Community College's gigamacro rig, as seen here:
gigamacro.com/gigapixel-macro-imaging-system /