Auto focus operates on a light emitter that's just out of the human eye spectrum and the emitter where ever it is cannot be blocked and has to point at your object of focus. Often you can see this light in twilight by pressing halfway down on the shutter. This is when the emitter bounces the light off the object and the chip in the camera makes assumptions on the distance and focus, although these little point and shoot cameras do not have a large focal range.

I'd take a look at the front of your camer in near darkness and press halfway down on the shutter and you may see where this emitter is located, if this camera has one. If its a fixed focal length objects will have to be somewhere between 6 and 12 ft away and the darker it is the further away to be in focus.

Some cameras are very sensitive to the time it takes when holding the shutter down half way to find a focus. Some need to be held down an unbearable amount of time, others not so much.

You have had some good advice already except for the banging the camera part, I wouldn't do that. You may want totdo a full reset. The batteries and/or battery pack are one battery source, there is usually one or two button batteries as well that retaing your settings during a battery change. They are accessed by a large flat screw on the bottom you can open with a dime or quarter, depending. Remove all batteries and then turn it on, yes with the batteries out and hold hte shutter down for several seconds. This will drain off any remaining power on the circuit board.

Let us know how that works.

Please follow the link>>

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/takeit/transfer.mspx

and let me know for further assistance.
Thanks

Replace the new batteries......

Hi and welcome to FixYa,

Offhand your described problem indicates problem with the auto-focusing of the CCD lens, the camera eye itself. Unfortunately, this is not a user/easy repair. Additionally, critical calibrations are required with equipment normally available for a do it yourself.

At this point, you may want to re-evaluate your options and consider simply replacing the camera. This would hold true if the repairs would no longer be economically reasonable.

Good luck and thank you for using FixYa.

Firt of all reset your canera settings to factory defaults.also remove memory crd and battery from it then refix both.then check .

The problem is the iris is stuck.

The solution is:
1. Move the camera to TV mode(the wheel with AUTO,M,TV,...)
2. Set the exposure time to 15 seconds(15")
3. Take a picture.
4. After 7 seconds remove the batteries and put them back on.
5. Repeat the procedure until it works.