My FUJI AX655 16 Megapixel Snapshot Camera Fixed Itself

My FUJI AX655 COMES BACK TO LIFE after five years of sitting, frozen with the lens open. Now it works again -- the lens, as one can see, is tucked normally back inside the camera! 

Automatic Camera Healing exists!

THE RETURN OF MY FUJI FINEPIX AX655, 16 MEGAPIXEL CAMERA!!!!

Last night, after writing my last blog post, I was cleaning up my desk here.

I noticed my old, black Fuji AX655 16 Megapixel snapshot camera sitting under some envelopes, headphones, and other bric-a-brac. The Fuji was my first digital snapshot camera that took good pictures, and it DID actually take really good pictures. My earliest blog posts here, from early 2015, are full of pics taken by the Fuji. I had bought the camera some time in late 2013 or early 2014.

My custom back then was to take an early morning, or late afternoon bike ride, and take my trusty Fuji AX655 with me, and take pics of whatever caught my fancy. I would then post some on this blog, or my Flickr (which still exists -- it can be seen here:   Chris C. | Flickr

(The pics I took with my Fuji Camera start about three pages in, with the Seattle Skyline photos taken from Alki Point).

Unfortunately, when I took my Fuji out on a bike ride with nearly spent batteries, some time in mid-2015 or so, it froze up on me. This apparently can happen with this model of Fuji camera, and some other digital snapshot cameras of the early 2010s. If one looks at various websites of the era, you'll see people asking how to unfreeze their camera -- which is what happened to my camera.

What would happen, is that the batteries would get too low, and instead of shutting down, the camera simply freezes, and no amount of gentle prying, cajoling, blowing of canned air, etc. will get it to operate.

I know. I tried. I even took the case apart, to see if anything could be done. No dice.

My FUJI AX655 with the lens frozen open. I think I took this pic with my Nikon, probably in Fall of 2015. In this pic the camera has no batteries in it anymore. the lens is open, and immobile.

A pic I took with my Nikon, of my Fuji with the case removed. No amount of canned air would free up the lens. :-( Instead, the camera had to sit for a few years until IT FIXED ITSELF.

A photo I had taken with my Fuji AX655, showing its capabilities in taking good pictures. It took awesome night and sunset shots. With a fresh set of batteries, Fuji AX655's are great cameras, and take great pictures VERY easily. They literally are 'point and click' cameras!

In a way, it sort of hurt seeing it frozen with the lens open. My camera was like a friend to me -- I had fun taking pics on bike rides and posting them on my Flickr, and on this blog.

So for the past five years my poor Fuji camera was nothing more than an artifact -- a fancy looking SD card reader (the only function that still worked).

Here is a lesson for anyone who has one of these little marvels:

If you have a Fuji AX655 snapshot camera from the early to mid 2010's, be aware: ALWAYS USE FRESH BATTERIES!!!

If you make sure you always have good or fresh batteries in them, these Fuji Cameras will serve you well. They are easy to use, and take great pictures.

Anyway, when my Fuji froze up I got another camera, my Nikon Coolpix L32, which also takes excellent pictures (once you use the SCENE settings, which causes the camera to adjust to the right light settings). In my article on how to take great pics with a Nikon L32 (you can see it here: Interrock Nation: NIKON COOLPIX L32 -- how to get decent pictures from one ) I talk about both cameras in detail.

In that blog post in November 2015, I also mentioned what happened with my poor Fuji. At that time, and since then, my Fuji camera's been little more than an SD card reader, or paperweight.

FIRE IT UP, AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS

So last night, while cleaning up my desk, I saw it sitting there, lens still stuck open, and a thought came to me: why not see if it will fire up now?

What could it hurt?

I put in some batteries, press the power button -- and BINGO! The lens starts working! 

The LCD screen shows activity! When I turned it off, the lens -- instead of remaining stuck in the open position -- it tucked itself back into the camera like it is supposed to do.

I turned it on again. The lens opens, like it's supposed to. The LCD screen shows what the lens sees, and it's in focus. It tells me there's no SD card in the camera, and has me set the date, which is 2014, so I leave it there.

It took five years of sitting for the CAMERA TO FIX ITSELF.

I'll hand this to the Fuji company -- any camera that will fix itself after five years of sitting is an OK product by me.

Apparently there was some issue in the microprocessor that needed a complete re-set. Or something.

Right now, I'm not complaining. Seeing the lens operate was like seeing an old friend come back to life.

Anyway, I was surprised to see the camera OPERATING NORMALLY AGAIN.

Very happy, actually.

I will see if it takes pictures later this week when I get an SD card for it. Fingers are crossed.

If it doesn't work, I will write about that also. But the lens opens and shuts, and the LCD readout sees what the lens is seeing, so who knows?

THE NEXT EVENING: THE CAMERA WORKS, AND EVEN TAKES PICTURES!

It is now Monday evening, and I just got an SD card for my Fuji. I put it in the camera, and a fresh set of AA batteries. I took two pics of my Sangean PR-D5 radio, and then loaded them into my computer.

Here they are -- proof of Automatic Camera Healing:

Photo taken with Fuji AX655, with flash (I forgot how to turn the flash off).

My Sangean PR-D5 radio (tuned to KVRI 1600, a Punjabi / Sikh prayer music station near the Canadian border), with no flash (I figured out how to switch off the flash -- the menu on these Fuji Cameras is actually very easy to use). I used an LED headlamp to illuminate the pic. As you can see, my old, froze-up FUJI AX655 is now working again!

WHY DID IT FIX ITSELF?

My takeaway and guess is that there is a SOFTWARE GLITCH in these cameras that locks them up when you have the camera operating and battery juice gets too low. The microprocessor simply doesn't know what to do. It freezes. Maybe it's like a computer bug -- after all, there is a small microprocessor in every digital snapshot camera that makes it work.

The several years of sitting drained the microprocessor to the extent that it made a complete re-set.

This is the only explanation I have for this apparent miracle.

So -- if you have a FUJI AX655 -- or similar, early 2010's digital snapshot camera, and it froze up on you -- and you still have it, try firing it up. If you have one of these little marvels and it happens to freeze up on you, take the batteries out, set it in a drawer, and wait a few months.

An admittedly blurry pic of my Fuji Camera's LCD screen. As you can see, there is a battery meter, circled in the lower right of the screen. It has THREE BARS. My suggestion, is if you have a Fuji AX655, change the batteries when it hits TWO BARS, and definitely change the batteries if it get down to ONE BAR. I do not remember how low the camera was when it froze on me. I think it was showing ONE BAR, and it still froze up. So, TWO BARS is probably the limit!

And if you have a Fuji like mine, and it is working, my guess is that every time the BATTERY METER goes down to TWO BARS -- replace the AA's. If it hits one bar -- turn the camera off! Load fresh batteries!

Perhaps always having a spare set of AA's in your pocket is a good idea with these cameras.

After all, my FUJI worked great for over a year until the freeze-up happened. I know that with any of my digital cameras -- except the two I know will automatically shut down when batteries are low (my Nikon L32 and my old, thrift store Canon A520) -- I intend to replace batteries frequently. 

I also have an older Samsung S630 that works, but I haven't used much. I got it at a thrift store in 2019 for $7.99. It takes two AA's. I have no idea if it freezes up when batteries are low, but I'm not taking that chance.

Either way, it's nice when an older piece of electronics comes back to life. I took a lot of photos with my Fuji. I hope to take some more, now that she is working again.

My Flickr again, if anyone wants to see the pics I took with my Fuji (some of the photos there were taken with my Canon, too, I think):

Chris C. | Flickr 

The pics I took with my Fuji AX655 start about three pages in (there are 9 pages of photos). The first set you can see that I took with the Fuji Camera is the pics of the Seattle Skyline from Alki Beach, taken in May, 2015. And many, if not most, of the earlier pics were taken with the Fuji, too.

Here are a couple shots I pulled off my Flickr, as I was looking back in time, to 2012-2014.:

A pic I took of a local beaver's pond, October 2014, just before Halloween.

A pic of me in my Halloween costume, 2014. There are a lot of Halloween pics in my Flickr, early on.

A pic of my cat on Halloween, I'm not sure which year. The date stamp says Fuji, and 2012. But it might have been 2013 or even 2014. It took a few photos for me to get the date stamp set. I think I got the camera in October of 2013. In fact, the first pic I took with it was of my GE Superadio, which is the top pic in my blog post on Superadios, which can be found here:

Interrock Nation: Boosting the antenna circuit of a GE SUPERADIO 1 & 2

Here is the first pic I took with the Fuji camera, actually (the radio, by the way, still works):

Here are two other, more scenic photos, which I took with the Fuji Camera that same day in October. As you can tell, it can take good pictures. The cameras are worth rejuvenating if you have one that froze:

The October countryside just north of Enumclaw, Washington.

Another view of the same area -- farmland near Krain, Washington -- a small place in South King County.

These photos above are on my post on 'Beautiful South King County', a blog post about my area of Washington State. The link is here:

Interrock Nation: Beautiful South King County

And so we finish another post on the wonderful world of electronics. Periodically, I receive comments concerning strange things that happen with radios and the like. A lot of the issues may be physically oriented, i.e. switches that get dirty and go bad, but as we've seen over a few of my blog posts on radios, some issues are with the firmware that runs the device. My Sangean PR-D5 needs to be re-set from time to time because the power button lags. My DX-375 radio needed to be re-set once (I forget what the reason was). And now my Fuji Camera needed to have the microprocessor completely drain of life before it decided to operate the camera lens again.

Such is life. :-)

Until next blog post, I wish all of you well. Stay safe. Peace.

C.C. -- February 9th, 2021