Saturday, January 18, 2014

Outcrop work today

Just wanted to hit the outcrop today and test out the new camera and deep-resolution montage techniques.  I've switched to robust open source OS X software (Hugin) for the montage generation from overlapping photographs.  I shot a place on highway 412 near Huntsville that has Mississsippian  Hindesville and Fayetteville Shale.  Maybe 60 feet of vertical section, but spread across a quarter mile of road cut. Here is a sample photo of festoon cross bedding in the Hindesville.


Each shot from the Nikon D610 is big; about 10Mb and 5400x3650 pixels. I worked parallel to the outcrop on the other side of the highway to get 61 overlapping shots.  But it was a windy, sunny day.  Wind makes it hard to get full resolution because of camera shake.  Full sun gives problems with contrast variations when clouds blow by, etc.  Still on the learning curve. 

One shot I did get was my 1973 Toyota Land Cruiser (The Big Chigg) with a fresh wax job in a nice setting.