I have a Sony camera which will do around 5 minutes with non rechargeable cells, then says low battery and cuts off. Only ones that will last are the Energiser Lithium cells, which will do hours. 1Ah AA NimH cells the same long run time. Just the spiky high current draw as the camera charges up the flash circuitry if the light level drops down triggers the UVLO.
I bought the camera on Gumtree, not because I wanted the camera, but it was advertised with 3 MS cards, and they were a mix of high capacity and low capacity ones, and I wanted one bigger than the 8M one in the Mavica. The camera and cards were cheaper than the one 128M card alone, plus it came with the Energiser Lithium cells as well, which did a month of shooting every so often. Now it is in a drawer as I have other cameras I like with better resolution and better focusing.