I was excited to finally get my camera. I seem to be having focus issues however. The machine has a bed of 600x900. The camera is a 90 degree 5mp camera mounted 35.5" above the bed.
The picture in the middle of the bed is extremely sharp in actuality but looks very soft in the camera. What you see is about the best focus I can achieve trying to manipulate the tiny focus ring. In addition, the edges seem to be much worse. Look at the paper on the left side of the bed.
I did remove the little piece of plastic film from the lens and I also tried cleaning the lens with a cotton swab and some alcohol.
Try reducing the lighting a bit, if you can - that’s blowing out a little. Unfortunately these cameras have a relatively narrow depth of focus, so your best bet is to focus on something that’s about 1/2 way between the center of the bed and the sides, and that will give you the most even focus overall.
The distance from the center of the bed to the camera is not going to be the same as the distance from one side of the bed to the camera. Depth of field isn’t a plane, it’s a sphere.
The focus on the 90° camera is a tiny ring. I destroyed one camera by turning it in the wrong direction, or possibly grasping the barrel rather than the ring. I should attempt to design a tiny 3D printed wrench to manipulate the focus, akin to the wrenches for water filter canisters, but I’m too lazy and use other work-arounds to ensure work piece placement.
The Oz-man’s suggestion is one I’ll use the next time, focusing on something halfway out from the center.
I’ve seen better, but it’s pretty close - The 60 degree is worse, but your bed is pretty large. For accurate placement, even if it’s a touch fuzzy it’s still very usable, so I wouldn’t be overly concerned. Set the focus as I suggested, run some tests, and let me know how it works.
After playing around with it, about 75% of the center of the bed is in pretty good focus so I left it. Ran the calibration but a couple of questions.
When doing the lens calibration it asks if I have a fish eye or normal lens. Don’t remember seeing that in the tutorial video. For a 5mp 90 degree camera, which is it?
To get the patter to fill the area it’s asking for me to fill, I have to elevate the pattern nearly halfway up from the bed to the lens. Is that ok?
Fisheye, technically. The 60 and 90 are pretty narrow field, so standard works pretty well, but fisheye will be marginally more accurate. (the video was recorded before we differentiated the lens type)
Yes, that’s fine. You don’t even have to mount the camera in the machine to to the lens calibration - it’s just measuring the lens distortion, nothing else.
I have to admit I’ve given up on the camera. I removed it from the machine and just tried some focus tests pointing it at my patterned wall. There is something “off” with the lens. When focused in the center it is very much out of focus. I thought I had it dialed in but it’s off considerably.
