This pack contains the data set obtained from the high-resolution digital image correlation (HRDIC) study of an AZ31 magnesium alloy. This data set can be visualised using the notebook (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.376503), which can be used as a companion to out article entitled " Why magnesium is not brittle: a quantitative study on the accommodation of deformation incompatibility". Additionally, EBSD data set for the same region can be found in https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.345925. This data repository contains: AZ31.txt: correlation data. AZ31.npy: correlation data in binary iPython format. MSSPowerNorm.tif: high-resolution image of the effective shear strain using the data set and the iPython notebook. Patterning was performed using an in house styrene-assisted gold remodelling device producing gold speckles sizes in the range 20-40 nm. Backscattered electron images were obtained using a FEI Magellan HR 400L FE-SEM at a working distance of 3.2 mm, 1 kV, 0.8 nA beam current, using immersion mode and a beam deceleration with stage bias of 2 kV. Mosaics of 15x15 images were used to cover 135x120 µm2. Each tile is an image containing 2048 x 1768 pixels and has a horizontal field of view of 14.92 µm. The images were overlapped by 25% to enable easy stitching prior to the digital image correlation. Two mosaics were obtained, one before and one after deformation