A microscopic look at the Audio-Technica AT-VM95E

I’ve been messing with a 4.5X macro lens and focus stacking, and suddenly things that were microscopic became visible. It is amazing how much (normally invisible) gunk gets on a record needle after just an hour of use.

A used stylus that looks clean in a normal photo looks almost surreal when viewed at the microscopic level, due to accumulated debris.

I trained a 4.5X (magnification) macro lens on an Audio-Technica AT-VM95E cartridge, one that’s seen just a few hours total play time. It’s already covered in gunk!

By way of comparison, in a normal (macro) shot it looks perfectly normal.

To achieve the microscopic macro view (above), I took a total of 40 shots while adjusting the focus distance slightly between each one, so that the sharply focused section of each exposure overlaps the next one. The other two images also use the process.

I then combined the results using “focus stacking” software. Only with this process can you get everything in focus like you see in these images.