srcv@: Would we be able to obtain/acquire this particular camera model in order to be able to reproduce?

chfremer@ :

We don't have Microsoft LifeCam Cinema camera. I will request for purchase.

Order has been placed for Microsoft LifeCam Cinema camera and we might receive it in a couple of days.  I will update the bug accordingly. 

Thanks srcv@ for getting us that specific camera model!
I tested it on the Chromebit using both M57 and M59 from the stable channel.
What I found is the following: When using the camera in M57, some of the camera 
controls get set to incorrect values. This is the bug we tracked in issue 
709819, which was fixed with M59.

Now, for most camera models, the controls ended up getting set back to proper
values with M59, based on the test results in 
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=709819#c43.
However, it looks like some camera models ended up keeping the incorrect 
settings even with M59. So even though M59 may no longer change the camera 
settings to incorrect values, for some models it also does not modify values 
that are already incorrect.

In the case of my test of the Lifecam Cinema (045e:075d), the values it ended up
with after M57 are as follows (obtained via luvcview on Ubuntu 16.04).

9963776    133        # name:Brightness                       type:1 min:30    max:255   step:1     def:133
9963777    10         # name:Contrast                         type:1 min:0     max:10    step:1     def:5
9963778    200        # name:Saturation                       type:1 min:0     max:200   step:1     def:83
9963788    1          # name:White Balance Temperature, Auto  type:2 min:0     max:1     step:1     def:1
9963800    2          # name:Power Line Frequency             type:3 min:0     max:2     step:1     def:2
9963802    10000      # name:White Balance Temperature        type:1 min:2800  max:10000 step:1     def:4500
9963803    50         # name:Sharpness                        type:1 min:0     max:50    step:1     def:25
9963804    10         # name:Backlight Compensation           type:1 min:0     max:10    step:1     def:0

After using guvcview to set the values back to their defaults (see the numbers 
in the "def" column, also had to set auto-focus to enabled), I was able to 
confirm that it looks normal again in M59. More conveniently, in guvcview, there
is a menu entry Settings->Hardware Defaults that does the same.

Note, I also found that using the camera on some other machines, e.g. on a Mac 
or Windows machine, seems to reset some of the values, but not necessarily all 
of them. Once I ended up in a state where everything looked normal, except 
that it was a bit too bright.

Thanks srcv and Chris for having purchased the cam and deep-dived this so
thoroughly!

Do I have a way to reset these values from my Chromebit?

Thanks,

Leo

re #5: The short answer is yes, but it requires a bit of fiddling.

Long answer:
After a little digging, I found a way, and also learned something interesting about where the incorrect settings seem to be coming from. Here are the steps:

1.) Put the Chromebit into developer mode. Instructions for this are found here: https://www.chromium.org/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/generic
2.) Install crouton by following the instructions here: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton#prerequisites
I followed the example for Ubuntu LTE and Xfce.
3.) From the Ubuntu chroot, install guvcviewer via command-line:
sudo apt-get install guvcviewer
4.) Run guvcviewer from the Xfce desktop. In the dialog box that pops up, select the LifeCam as the camera.
5.) In the Settings UI, set the control values to the correct defaults listed in comment #4. In addition to those, make sure that auto-focus is enabled and zoom is set to 0.

The interesting thing I learned is that when asking guvcviewer in this environment to set the controls to the Hardware Defaults, it ends up setting them to exactly the wrong values that were set in M57. This indicates that in this environment (59.0.3071.113 with Platform 9460.67.0), the driver reports these values as the defaults.