What is up with my webcam?

It seems to "black out" every so often. If i close and reopen it it seems to work fine for the time being. Anyone else have this issue?

 

same here bro..time to time it would do like a "hiccup" the my video would go black for a sec then like come back.its as if the thing is rebooting itself, i can tell cause the webcam tried to re adjust its magnification and stuff. tried searching gateway.com for an update on the driver but i have the latest on my lappy

btw, i have a 6860 too.

 

Have the same problem on my 7811

I noticed if I shine my flashlight into webcam it comes back, almost as if the aperture is to sensitive and at some point reverses.

 

that is another problem with mine but its all different from the first one i mentioned. this happens if the room is too dark.instead of the camera increasing the brightness, it does the exactly opposite. thanks to my handy phone with flashlight it helps restore the brightness back.

 

Yup, gotta keep it nice and bright.

 

Thing is why does it darken the image due to lack of light

Surely it should lighten the image instead of shutting it down in brightness....

 

I'm thinking that it's a software issue (not necessarily driver). My 7811 sometimes does the same thing. It would be nice to find a piece of software for camera control that removes the automatic functions and allow the user to manually set exposure etc. I'm not a fan of the lack of control built into the software that came with the machine.


Daggs

 

I just posted a reply on another thread here that mentioned a "night mode" option - will check this out tonight when I get home

 

Sweet.. let us know if it's as "flaky" as the normal mode. hehe

 

Well it turns out that the night mode was already selected....

So it can't be that - there is also a backlight mode...

Wasn't using the cam last night but I'll report back if anything helps

 

anyone figure this problem out? It seems to causing problems for EVERYBODY, and its starting to get really annoying too.

Update: I read a few other threads, and I pointed my tv remote really close to the webcam, and WOAH WOAH WOAH it fixed it lol. I guess that's a temporary solution, but still annoying nevertheless (what happens if there isn't a remote around? )

 

give the cam a close up finger ?

 

Woah, old thread is old. Anyways, still haven't quite found a fix for this. Facing the camera to a source of light always helps, and occasionally putting my finger up close to it helps. The software for this thing is garbage

 

The light behind you trick certainly helps indeed - I'm sure I unselected the backlight option and I don't get the problem nearly as often now - the night mode thing is just a waste of time.

If they are still using this camera in current models there must be a workaround that fixes this stupid problem - I mean if the light is low why does it dim the bloody image? Any other camera I've used lightens the image...

 

Hey,

I had posted about this before and got a few of the similar answers. The easiest seems to be putting your finger close enough to it that the blue webcam LED provides the light to reset it.

Someone else recommended Chicony drivers (as they had solved problems on a different laptop), and I am currently using them, but alas, they do not solve the problem.

 

Interesting observation:

I only got the 'blackout' problem when running it in 1280x800 or 1280x1024. Lower resolutions did not have the 'night vision' problem.