Is this camera hopelessly broken???

Might be a loose cable, bad solder joint, that kinda thing, digital cameras are a real pain to work on in my limited experience with them.

I had a similar problem with a Canon, I eventually figured out that even tho the battery charger said the batteries were fully charged, only 2 of the 4 AA cells were charged, as somehow the charger had been switched to 2 cell mode. I hadnt paid attention, and wasnt even aware there was a 2 cell mode.

You see, if the camera fully lost power, it would just turn off. Instead, it performs a full shutdown, retracts the lens, etc.

Yeah.

Does it do the same thing with an AC adapter (assuming it accepts one)?

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I didn't say anything about it fully losing power. A bad connection somewhere can cause any number of weird symptoms, it may be incorectly detecting low battery, or thinking the power button has been pressed, or some other fault condition.

Not sure if you want to spend money on it, but Fuji in the UK refurbish their digital cameras for a very reasonable fixed price and they slap a 1 year warranty on it as well; not sure if Fuji USA offer the same service but it wouldn't hurt to call. Martin

Just get a Nikon D3 and be done with it. I love mine.

Rita

I will check my batteries with a multimeter tonight. It is a good explanation, but it occurred even when I bought regular batteries. But I will try to fully exclude this possibility.

Tis is a damn good question! I will try tonight.

I use it mostly for ebay, to take pictures of crude dirty machinery, I think that it is too expensive for it. I want something under $1k.

Does this camera have a separate door over the memory card, and does opening that door when the camera is on cause an immediate shutdown? If so, perhaps the switch or related mechanism of that door is giving trouble.

You might try searching and/or posting a query in the FujiFilm talk forum at dpreview

If that's all you need it for, you ought to be able to pick up a good used 2 megapixel camera for next to nothing these days. I still use a Canon S100 I bought years ago, surprising thing is I still get compliments on pictures I've taken with it. It's not high end, that's for sure, but even years later it makes a good basic camera.

Andrew, this explanation is the most consistent with what I have experienced.

OK. Thanks. I put the kids to bed, so I can go and look now.

Not at all. I use mine for eBay as well. Hell, it is part of your business so you might as well buy something you'll enjoy.

Rita

Thanks to all. I spent quite a bit of time with this camera. I am now positive that the cause is mechanical in nature. This camera indeed has a feature that turns it off if the lid of the memory compartment is opened. Even very slight touching of that lid, causes ???Å Á????Òthe camera to shut down.

The switch is inside the camera body and is activated by a little "finger" on the lid that goes into the hole to push the top of the switch.

Now that I have established the cause, with some certainty, we can think of the best way to fix that.

Could you use a small pointy object to depress that switch and fire off a few test shots?

One other thing to check: dirty or corroded battery contacts. Good way to clean them is with a pencil eraser - just grab any standard pencil (good for reaching into the battery compartment) and give all the contacts a quick scrub with the eraser.

If you can get to the board, solder a jumper across the switch. Don't pull the memory card out while the camera is on, not too hard to remember that.

It could be that the auto-shutoff setting has been inadvertently shorted. Have you checked this setting? Some people take a long time setting up between shots, and if the camera has a timer that can be set to shut off at a shorter interval, this might be the problem. It also may be that an element in that circuit (usually an RC circuit) has changed values to shorten the time.

Your limited experience shows.