I’m bringing this conversation back to the R&D thread…
Not surprisingly, you were right. My haste from the excitement seems to have gotten the better of me.
After some more thorough testing of the lenses I have on hand, it appears I am able to bump up the clarity by a significant factor with respect to focusing directly on the bit. The upper image represents the settings from the recent video. The lower image is the change.
The striations in both the collet nut and end mill are much more noticeable with the more aggressive macro lens. I anticipated the camera might be a bit too far away for this lens, but it seems to work well.
Additionally, it seems I will be picking up another 52mm lens adapter as the angled shot also appears to benefit from some tweaking with a macro bump.
I guess I should not be surprised as the GoPro is really a camera geared toward outdoor, wide-angle shots. But I expected the close range to be better based on the number of spindle-attached GoPro mounts I’ve seen available for CNC machines. Still, it seems with the right modifications that I may be able to get solid results from these cameras.