The present invention provides a rapid, high quality iris imaging system. In one embodiment, on-axis illumination is used. A single steering mechanism steers both the camera and the illumination, without parallax issues. The illumination beam can be combined along the cameras optical axis before or after the fine steering and focus correction mechanism. In a pre-correction configuration, the iris illumination spot can be reduced in size to be only slightly larger than the iris. In both the pre and post-correction configuration, the eye safety limits will be most critical at the subject, which allows for maximization of the illumination flux.
