The cheapish USB 'scopes I see advertised seem to give reasonably well focussed images of close-up subjects, but what about more distant subjects? I was hoping to use one to give at least fair quality images of subjects at tens of metres range.
640x480 is what is generally advertised for these and would be ok for my purpose. I need the compactness/format of an endoscope so can't use additional lenses or a normal point-and-shoot camera.
I have a dental camera re-purposed to be a bore scope to look at the valve seats in my aircraft engines. I want it to focus at a distance of ~1cm. I recently bought one of $10 flea-bay ones, but haven't tested it yet.
The cheapish USB 'scopes I see advertised seem to give reasonably well focussed images of close-up subjects, but what about more distant subjects? I was hoping to use one to give at least fair quality images of subjects at tens of metres range.
I think you will have a bad time using the terms borescope/endoscope because any camera used for bore or endo is going to be built for up close focus with a limited field of depth. They are built this way by the nature of their use like inspecting a tight bore. Tens of meters is quite a long range. Guessing any of the small web type cameras won't fit the bill for you or the cameras used on the popular drones?
Those would probably do. Or a small dash-cam. Or even a cheapo compact cell-phone. This project is on a back-burner for now, but thanks all for the input.