Upgrading the web cam at Harris Hill

The web camera I put up on Harris Hill works great and I've had lots of comments about how helpful it is to have a camera so people can see what is going on.

However, the quality is poor (if this image doesn't look too bad it means I've replaced the camera).

  

I had a replacement camera of better quality - the Microsoft Lifecam VX5000.  However, that camera had AWFUL quality when placed outdoors.  Turns out this is a common problem and I found a fix for it on instructables.com.

It seems the aperture is set wide for webcams so they look good indoors.  This causes them to have way too wide an aperture when used outdoors.  The instructables site told me that fixing this was as simple as taking the camera apart and placing a piece of cardboard with a pinhole aperture over the lens opening.

It worked!  Incredibly, when I did that, the camera became suitable for outdoor use.  A little adjustment with the image controls gave me acceptable -and better, image quality.

I plan on replacing the existing camera in a weatherproof enclosure this weekend when I'm up at Harris Hill for my monthly duty cycle.  Hopefully, the little piece of plastic I used will remain in place with the airplane glue I use to bond it to the lens surrounding.