Let $T$ be a contraction on a complex, separable, infinite dimensional Hilbert space and let $\sigma \left( T\right) $ (resp. $\sigma _{e}\left( T\right) )$ be its spectrum (resp. essential spectrum). We assume that $T$ is an essentially isometric operator, that is $I_{H}-T^{\ast }T$ is compact. We show that if $D\diagdown \sigma \left( T\right) \neq \emptyset ,$ then for every $f$ from the disc-algebra, \begin{equation*} \sigma _{e}\left( f\left( T\right) \right) =f\left( \sigma _{e}\left( T\right) \right) , \end{equation*} where $D$ is the open unit disc. In addition, if $T$ lies in the class $ C_{0\cdot }\cup C_{\cdot 0},$ then \begin{equation*} \sigma _{e}\left( f\left( T\right) \right) =f\left( \sigma \left( T\right) \cap \Gamma \right) , \end{equation*} where $\Gamma $ is the unit circle. Some related problems are also discussed.

We consider the problem: If $K$ is a compact normal operator on a Hilbert module $E$, and $f\in C_0(\Sp K)$ is a function which is zero in a neighbourhood of the origin, is $f(K)$ of finite rank? We show that this is the case if the underlying $C^{\ast}$-algebra is abelian, and that the range of $f(K)$ is contained in a finitely generated projective submodule of $E$.