Camera choice very confused

[azmunkey (Carrie Steffen)]

I just purchased a OMTech 60W. 500x700mm bed area. Looking to get a camera. Which one is recommended for my machine?

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

We offer a tool to help you choose.

What is the best camera lens to choose for my bed size?

To answer this question requires one additional piece of information: The height above the bed that you plan to mount the camera. LightBurn now has a helper that will do the ugly math for you. Go to Help > Camera Selection Help and the software will use the current workspace size by default, and show you the minimum mounting heights for all the cameras we sell: [image] This number is the absolute minimum required for the camera to see the whole working area. You will need to allow a little …

[Wrenzoh (Scott McWilliams)]

Are those measurements based on the lid being open? I’m getting about 25" from that dimension with my 50W OMTech. Does the minimum mean that I can essentially pick up any of the cameras and be ok?

[LightBurn (Oz)]

Think of it like this:

If I wanted to take your photo, and get all of you in the frame, I would normally do so by moving closer or further from you, looking through the viewfinder, until I saw that you were framed properly. This is usually how it’s done, but if you were and I were both anchored to the ground and couldn’t move, my only option would be choosing between a few different lenses to try to get the best framing.

If I chose a very wide angle lens, I’d get all of you, but I’d probably get a lot of the background around you too - you’d be small in the image, and it’d be tough to see much detail.

Putting a camera in the laser works like that - you want to pick the lens that will see the whole working area of the laser, but not too much more if at all possible. If you chose the 160 degree lens, and mounted it 25" above the bed, you’d be capturing the whole laser area, and a significant chunk of the room around it, because that lens only needs about 10" of clearance height to see your whole working area.

You also want to leave about two inches of wiggle room to account for the height of the mount and in case you aren’t mounting perfectly directly above.

From what you’ve said, I’d go with either the 90 or the 120, since those are going to be closer to the correct height, but not over it:

[Wrenzoh (Scott McWilliams)]

Thanks for the analogy, that makes sense. I’m not the OP, though, my bed size is a little smaller. Here’s my Camera Selection Help screen:

Based on that, I think maybe the 60 is the closest?

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

If your minimum mounting height is 606mm / 23.86" from the focused height of the bed, then this would be the choice recommended. You need to measure that distance to complete the equation.