In order to solve the problem of low accuracy and big error in hill climb searching method caused by the unimodal focal value function, a new autofocus method based on blur difference qualitative analysis was presented. First, the spatial-domain convolution/deconvolution transform was used to compute the blur difference at every point of two probed images corresponding to two different focus positions. Second, blur difference qualitative measurement of two images was made by voting policy. Then, the searching direction was determined by blur difference qualitative measurement of two probed images. Finally, using the variable step scheme, the searching range was gradually narrowed down and the searching steps was reduced until the best focus position was found. Three image sequences of difference focus positions were collected by an 18X zoom surveillance camera. The experimental result indicates that, compared with two typical methods based on focal value function, the proposed method keeps the advantages of the hill climb searching method with increasing the accuracy and reducing the error, and resolves the influence of local minima.