Never mind – I found the file where the theme short code was located and I just commented it out and now I have full image and caption functionality back under my control. I found it in autofocus-shortcodes.php one level down in an inc folder.
I just did this and now its working again.
//add_shortcode('wp_caption', 'autofocus_img_caption_shortcode');
//add_shortcode('caption', 'autofocus_img_caption_shortcode');
Well, I just learned way more than I ever wanted to about short codes, but now I must admit, I wonder what a good one can do if I learned how to write them. cool.