ISight exposure is overcompensating

Aaargh. Having suffered for months with the 'in use by another application' problem, I inadvertently fixed my iSight camera yesterday when another, separate problem forced me to perform an Archive and Install.
With my Mac back at OSX 10.4.4, I found my iSight cam was now working again. I used it in iChat very successfully with a friend for about half an hour last night.
Today, I set about bringing my Mac fully back up to date and ran the 10.4.11 combo updater (intel), then via Software Update a series of Java updates and the Quicktime update.
Guess what ... iSight is now on the fritz again. But it is a different problem this time. Now, the picture is very dark. I can sit right up close to the camera and point a desk lamp straight at myself and just about make myself out, but the next thing the camera adjusts its exposure down again and everything goes dark. This occurs in iChat video preview, Photo Booth and iMovie. In Skype, if I go to Preferences and enable video, then very briefly when the iSight camera starts up, I get a good picture - but then in less than 2 seconds the exposure adjusts downwards and I'm left looking at near blackness again.
This is not a hardware problem - unless it's a very, very big coincidence that it should have happened today, while I'm busy doing software updates.
It looks very much to me as if either the update to 10.4.11, or one of the Java updates, or the Quicktime update, has in some way screwed up the exposure control on the iSight camera.
Is there a pref file somewhere I can trash to try to force this to re-set itself, or some other solution?

Hi, and thanks for your suggestions. I repaired permissions but this didn't fix the issue. The troubleshooting tips didn't work either - sadly in my experience Apple's troubleshooting tips are so hopelessly generic that they're rarely of use. Or maybe I've just been at this game so long that I've already tried those things before I start looking for help ...
Anyway, after a search of this forum (using Google, which is far better at searching the Apple Support site than the site's own search option) I came across someone who fixed this issue with Ecamm's iGlasses application. I have installed the seven-day trial version and it works - but only if you keep it permanently set on 'exposure lock'. This option prevents the iSight camera from adjusting its exposure for the ambient light conditions, or in my case over-adjusting so far that you couldn't see anything.
I consider this to be a work-around, and not a solution, because seven days from now I am going to have to purchase iGlasses if I want to keep using my iSight camera.
What I really want to know is, what settings within the Mac is iGlasses interfering with in order to prevent the iSight cam from messing itself up, and how can I alter those settings myself without having to purchase third-party software? Surely there's a control panel, pref pane, pref file or something, somewhere, that I can have a play with?

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