for these cam lenses at least, a higher number (in mm) means a narrower field of view. (that seems contrary to my experince with telescope eyepieces, but maybe not relevant to this conversation).
as you noted, they are typically fixed aperture/iris (generally as big as possible to get the most light to the sensor).
you have the opposite need now, for smaller aperture to control DoF at very close focus.
I still wonder how your previous cam did in this setup. Was it a Vari-focal perhaps? VF lenses often have a (manual) iris/apperture adjustment, but would not fit in this housing...
I've had 2 different cameras in the tube. First was a fixed-focus MicroSeven camera that also did not focus very well. I've never had an owl in the box, so I can't really tell what I will or won't be able to see, but I do have a bed of wood chips in there. You can see what that looked like before the camera died:
The box has a partition part-way, which you can see in the model. The model doesn't include the camera baffle, which is mounted on the hinged side door. I would think any owlets would start out on the near side of the partition, but that's just a guess:
The camera in there right now, temporarily, is a Reolink RLC-411, which has motorized zoom and AF:
This camera is observing a "bait hive" or "swarm trap" in my backyard, hoping to entice a swarm of feral bees to move in.I have another BeeCam rotating amon...
www.youtube.com
(that stream works only occasionally, because it resets at 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM, and sometimes I'm not around to fix it, and I also can't figure out how to get it to archive right now).
Optically I would have been fine leaving the RLC-411 in there, but the Reolink cameras of that hardware revision have a horrible problem with
stuttering in their RTSP feeds in night vision mode. It's only the RTSP feed, because you can see the native (Flash) client on the left side of that video, and it's only in night mode, as the daytime videos look good.