iSight adjustments possible for free?

I just got my brand new iMac in today and was playing around with YM and Ichat and cannot find any way to adjust the picture brightness, quality, etc. It comes on and works, but the picture is kind of dark and grainy. Surely a $1700 computer has a camera control without having to buy iGlasses??? I mean a $20 Logitec comes with a camera control program for Mac. I have searched through the forums and the internet and it seems all anyone says anything about is buying iGlasses and even then it says it is for the external iSight and not the built in iMac version. Anyone had any luck with adjusting this camera without having to resort to stage lights and makeup?

I get lots of comments saying how good my inbuilt iSight looks when I use skype. Maybe it's software. Maybe you have a faulty iSight . Have you called Apple?

If the lighting around where you are is poor, the iSight picture will be poor. Alot also depends on your internet connection.

It looks fine if I shine a desk lamp toward my face or move the desk over under brighter lights, but compared to my Powerbook simply using a Logitec Quickcam it is dark and grainy under the same, indirect lighting conditions. The quickcam has a control panel where you can lighten or darken it, change frame rate, etc, and if I turn everything down on the powerbook I can make it simulate the poor grainy appearance that the iSight has, so it would stand to reason that if iSight provided a control panel you could lighten it up and make it look as good as the Quickcam. I suppose I'll just have to fork out another $8 for iGlasses, but geez, can't Apple just provide something built into the Utilitues or system preferences to control it? I never will understand their logic on some things like that. Thanks for the info!

schweb said:

If the lighting around where you are is poor, the iSight picture will be poor. Alot also depends on your internet connection.

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IMHO, your internet connection is the be all and end all of quality when it comes to using the iSight camera. You won't achieve the best quality if you are on dial-up and if you have super fast broadband then you will see less and less imperfections in the quality.

The quality that I am really concerned about is not even internet related. I can go into photobooth and its dark and grainy unless I turn on a desk lamp and shine it toward me. I am on Cox cable modem with the highest speed they have and everything internet related is fine and the video speed is great, its just that it is darker than I am used to and grainy looking unless I turn on a bright light in the room or shine the desklamp toward me. I'm not really talkiing about total black or anything, I do have picture and it is "so-so" - kind of reminds me of the "old days" with those old parallel port cameras back in the 90's, definitely not what I would expect from an expensive built in iSight camera. My laptop using the USB logitech cam isn't like that. In the exact same lighting conditions it is bright and clear - but of course it has a control panel that I use to make it bright and clear. I decided to go ahead and get iGlasses program and see how that works.

Just a follow-up, iGlasses works perfectly. It has quick drop downs for extra-bright and super-bright, color shifters, b&w, etc., plus it has a manual brightness slider and other adjustments that make the isight camera work just like you want it to. Why Apple chose not to provide a utility such as this is just beyond me. I just turned the brightness up from standard (default isight mode) to extra bright (one notch) and the grainyness and darkness went away completely. Oh well, an $8 well spent, but still unbelieveable that nothing like this comes with it for free.

like ' rcltrh ' said - use iglasses to adjust the image of the isight

here is a link to there site

http://www.ecamm.com/mac/iglasses/

I agree with the original poster. I think it is a shame that Apple has not provided a Preferences panel for the iSight. It is a wonderful camera, but it needs strong lighting to deliver good results. Unfortunately, iGlasses is a pretty necessary purchase along with your iSight. I use iSight/iGlasses, and I am very pleased with the combination. I would recommend (again however, Apple REALLY should have provided something like this themselves).