Isight shutter clicking in & out of focus

why does this happen? the isight shutter clicks once every two seconds and with every click it goes in focus, out of focus, in focus, out of focus...
I'm using it with Evo Cam software, and it's been working fine all morning, and now this.
cheers Boyan

Hello Boyan Timotiyevich,
Besides a brody's good advice, you will also experience the constant auto-focus if you have a bright light source, either into the lens or reflected off of the wall and into the lens of the camera. It just can't seem to handle that and keeps trying to re-focus. If there is a light source on the wall the cam is pointing at, try removing it and let us know.
Respectfully,
Bill Gallagher

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New iSight camera out of focus

I just received my new iSight external video camera which I am using on a Mac Pro. I have access to an internal iSight camera on an iMac. The internal camera works great. However, the external iSight is out of focus.
I have gone through all the Apple trouble shooting and contacted Apple support by phone. I have spent many hours on this problem. After completing this process the camera remains out of focus in iChat, iMovie and Skype. After reading several discussion groups I tried iGuess as it has a focus feature which is not available in iChat, iMovie or Skype. To my pleasant surprise the camera focused.
My conclusion (which differs from that of Apple Support) is that this is not a mechanical problem but a software problem. Am I correct? Will there be a software update to fix this problem?

Know anybody else with a Mac that you could check this iSight on? Know anybody else with an external iSight that you could try on your computer? Just to make sure it is, in fact, the software and not the camera?
Plus, since the camera's new, go through Apple Support again and if they still think that the camera's hosed, why not exchange it? (See about them sending you a new one with a prepaid shipping label to return the old one, so you're never iSightless).
A software update for what? iChat? iMovie? Skype? All of the above? These softwares all work for your internal camera. Not familiar with iGuess, but you might be manually (un)focusing to compensate for a possible mechanical problem.

Click button/link in out of focus window to bring focus AND select button

example: firefox and mail are both open; mail is in front and ff is in back, out of focus but visible. there's a website open in ff, and I'm reading a mail message. I want to click on a link in the open ff page, but mail has focus. I must click the ff link TWICE (once to bring ff to focus, and once to then click the link). on a windows machine, all the buttons and links in all visible apps are always "live", so this annoyance doesn't happen. can it be fixed in tiger?

I believe this is considered correct behavior for Mac apps, despite the few that don't behave this way. It would all too easy to try to click on a mostly-hidden window to bring it to the top and accidentally click on something important - like an "Okay" or "Cancel" button. Things like buttons and links are only SUPPOSED to be "clickable" in the frontmost window, for user safety reasons.
For consistency, the rule applies whether or not the second window is mostly hidden, mostly visible, or whatever. Think of the confusion that "sometimes it takes one click, sometimes it takes two clicks" would engender!
By contrast, more than once I've done something unwanted (but so far not terribly destructive) in Windows when I was trying to change window focus but instead did something in that mostly hidden window.
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I take a lot of people shots and have way too many out of focus pics.

I have way too many out of focus shots. I usually use tv mode with the shutter set at least 250 with the anti shake on. I know there is a balance of aperature, iso and they seem to be close enough for lighting but the out of focus drives me nuts. This is the most important aspect of a pic in my opinion. I have sent my T2i in for focus issues two times and cannot tell a difference. Any suggestions????
Solved!
Go to Solution.

We'd probably have to see your shots with EXIF data to provide a specific response.
Canon did a 3-part video on how the AF system works with B&H Photo. You can find the videos on YouTube... here's the link to part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAx86nblZ2g
I seem to recall each part is about 30 minutes, but well worth the time in what you'll learn about the focus system that you might not have known.
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Image files with large pixel dimensions display out of focus in a Bridge viewer?

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Hi, Clay. Photoshop.com has its own forum, so you might want to post this there:
http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshopdotcom

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My camera is a Canon Rebel XS (dSLR) and I primarily use the 50mm f/1.8 lens.
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I am having difficulty with my photos coming out incositant - some are out of focus, while others in the same series (taken a moment apart) are tack sharp.
I've attached two examples - one of the out-of-focus image, the other sharp images (both have been blown up).
It is not camera shake and my settings are identical for both photos. (ISO 200 | f/4.5 | 1/100sec in this instance.)
This has become such a problem that I find myself needing to take 10x more photos of the same subject/pose in order to hopefully get one sharp image from the series.
I have asked multiple people about this problem (though I have yet to take my camera and lens to a shop due to lack of funds) and no one has any idea of either what I'm talking about or what the problem could be.
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Fuzzy/Out of Focus:
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This new pair of images does not look like camera motion -- this one looks like it missed focus.
If you use the included Canon Digital Photo Professional that came with your camera, you can right-click an image and tell it show you the focus point which were used (the camera wont know if you did a focus-and-recompose technique... so if you recompose after locking focus then the focus points indicated by DPP wouldn't be meaningful). But I bring this up because it would allow you to determine which focus point the camera claims it used.
I think you mentinoned that you used "One Shot" focus mode -- not AI Servo. One Shot should block the camera from taking the shot until it thinks it confirmed focus-lock on the selected AF point (or on at least one AF point it you allow the camera to pick from any of its available focus points.) In AI Servo the camera WILL take the shot when you fully press the button -- whether it successfully locked focus or not.
That brings us back to the subject of the focus test.
If you do not own a commercial chart, then you may want to download one from the Internet and print it. Here's a good site: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/focus-chart
Print the chart and follow the instructions. I deliberately run the camera out of focus to nearest focus distance and force the camera to re-focus and shoot... and I repeat this at least a half-dozen times. I then repeat... but this time deliberately run the camera out of focus to infinity before forcing the camera to focus and take the shot.
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Hey,
I've got a bit of a question. I recently got hold of a new LCD and hooked it up as my secondary display, and among other things, I like to keep work on one screen and video on the other. Trouble is, any time Quicktime loses focus, it drops back to windowed mode. Is there any way to lock it in fullscreen mode when it's out of focus and I'm typing and/or clicking around on the other display? Alternatively, can it be done with VLC? And one last thing just in case someone knows, can you lock a Hulu player in fullscreen?
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I've noticed the same thing. When editing in full screen mode everything looks soft. I have to zoom in to confirm focus (even a little zoom shows the actual sharpness more accurately). They probably are using an alias image to speed up previews of global edits, but it is annoying.

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Thanks for your reply and for the link. However, the link addresses the problem for TV appearance while mine was concerned about the playback on my iMac.
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Was the phone dropped, or immersed in water? Either of those could cause the camera to lose focus...
WyreNut
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Isight shutter clicking in & out of focus

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