Hey.
I also need a small camera that can take a clear picture at 9 cm or so. No chance to take the picture from further away and use bigger resolution: i need to do some image analysis in a enclosed, small setting.
Does anyone have any idea of any camera module that will give me that and will also be easy to use (interface - not necessary to process on Arduino, I can also send it to a computer to do the processing...).
I'm thinking something like this:
http://stores.ebay.com/electronics-lee/Camera-Module-/_i.html?_fsub=4272691013&_sid=903337233&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
or any small arduino/ raspberry compatible thingy.
Thanks
Hi, I have just the camera you want, but you can't have it because its too good.
The camera is inside my second last Nokia mobile phone, 2MB with nice auto focus, macro, flash control, great camera.
It now resides in a clean compartment of my toolbox and takes pics of most of the undocumented stuff I have to dismantle to fix.
I'm not at work so can't tell you the model number.
After that model they got rid of auto focus and macro, sob sob stupid sods.
Tom.... 
Not sure if this would help, but something I used to do with an old digital camera that didn't have macro zoom (Kodak DC3200) was to take a picture though a magnifier desk lamp. I would get pretty good shots of PCB close-ups, etc that way (minus a minor amount of lens aberration - cheap desklamp lens).
Perhaps something like that could be done using a quality web camera (for that, I have a personal preference for the Logitech Orbit AF)? Something to keep in mind for macro photography (no matter what or how you choose to do it) - use a "ring lamp" around your lens for the best lighting (google "macro ring light").
I have also heard of (and a friend of mine had good results doing so) of a hack you can do with some web cameras where you flip the lens around, and it basically turns the camera into a low-cost microscope; that, however, may be something outside of your needs. You might, however, just look into adding a different lens to a web camera (removing its original first), or somehow adjusting its existing lens in some way - in order to get the short focus you need...
Try a USB microscope camera. I have one and it will do just fine at 9cm distance.
I don't know exactly what "brand" mine is but it has an identical appearance to what I linked above (you know how it goes with Chinese stuff like that). I didn't load any special drivers on my Linux system to run it; it just treats it as a generic camera and just ... works.
I can provide an example picture but at present the forum is complaining that "the upload folder is full".
Yes, thank you cr0sh for the good ideas about the lens. I might get an ordinary cheap thingy and use different lens on it to get what i want.
Chagrin:
I don't know how viable is a USB microscope, or a web camera for that matter. The thing is I specified 9 cm for the focus distance because I only have about 10 cm worth of space, as in between the target and a wall. So the camera must fit in 10 cm and take a picture. This is why I gave that link with the small camera modules.
Does anyone have any experience with the small cam modules? How hard is it to connect them to the Arduino and, for example send pictures to the computer? Any online examples/ projects?
