Particles dissapearing when camera is close

Hello. I was trying to copy the Procedural Examples for a convincing lightning bolt particle effect. I noticed that it was using legacy particles, the ParticleEmitter, so I was trying to update it to use the ParticleSystem. I realize I'll have to post a bit of code here, so I apologize for the size:

Awake() of the particles:

void Awake () { oneOverZigs = 1f / (float)zigs;

  gameObject.particleSystem.enableEmission = false;
  particles = new ParticleSystem.Particle[zigs];
  //particleSystem.GetParticles (particles);
  noise = new Perlin ();

  emit (false);

}

emit of the particles:

   public override void emit (bool shouldEmit)
   {
      this.shouldEmit = shouldEmit;
      if (shouldEmit)
      {
         curTime = 0.0f;
         particleSystem.Emit (zigs);
      } else
      {
         particleSystem.Clear ();
      }
   }

Lastly, Update of the particles:

  void Update ()
       {
          if (shouldEmit)
          {
             curTime += Time.deltaTime;
             if (curTime > duration || source == null || dest == null)
             {
                recycle ();
                return;
             }
             float timex = Time.time * speed * 0.1365143f;
             float timey = Time.time * speed * 1.21688f;
             float timez = Time.time * speed * 2.5564f;
         
             for (int i=0; i < zigs; i++)
             {
                Vector3 position = Vector3.Lerp (source.position, dest.position, oneOverZigs * (float)i);
                Vector3 offset = new Vector3 (noise.Noise (timex + position.x, timex + position.y, timex + position.z),
                                         noise.Noise (timey + position.x, timey + position.y, timey + position.z),
                                         noise.Noise (timez + position.x, timez + position.y, timez + position.z));
 
 
                position += (offset * scale * ((float)i * oneOverZigs));
 
             
                particles [i].position = position;
                particles [i].color = Color.white;
                particles [i].size = 0.20f;
             }
         
             //particleEmitter.particles = particles;
             particleSystem.SetParticles (particles, particles.Length);
         
          }    
       }
    }

This works just fine... until I noticed that if I zoom in even modestly close to the particles (particles might take up... a square centimeter on the screen) they completely disappear! I've tried messing with Maximum Size in the renderer of the Particle System to no avail. I'm not getting anywhere near close enough for the camera to be "going through" or past these particles, Im quite far away. It's very strange to see them work fine from a very far distance but as soon as I zoom just a little they all disappear. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Pictures... Far enough away: Too close:

You can see the particle emitters in scene view in the second image, but no graphics. You can see the graphics in the first image, just a little further away.

Edit: It should be noted that the Shuriken particle system works just fine when I don't manually assign particle positions like I do in the above script. I use many particle effects and it doesn't matter where the camera is, I can still see them. It's just with these procedurally generated/manipulated particles that I'm having what seems to be clipping issues. Thanks again for any assistance.

Edit 2: It seems to be the direction the camera is facing too... If Im looking "east", I can zoom quite far up to the particles, but if im looking west, i have to zoom out much much further to see them. This is both in scene view and camera view. Maybe that would give a hint to the problem?