I took a geology class in college where we studied a lot of high res photos of both individual rocks and larger rock formations. They used some sort of moving b

I took a geology class in college where we studied a lot of high res photos of both individual rocks and larger rock formations. They used some sort of moving bed and a microscope for the rocks so you could get really close up while also seeing larger features. The formations we're photographed using a GigaPan mount that would allow you to attach a camera with a telephoto lens and it would step in both X and Y axis to create hundreds of images it would later stitch into a composite.