zoomkat:
The wires from the power supply may be too small to pass sufficient starting current to the motor resulting a brownout of the camera. Particulalry if your AA batterys are in one of those radio shack battery holders, that could be an issue. If the cam could operate at 11v instead of 12v, then a diode in the cam + wire with a big capacitor between the diode and the cam, your problem might be solved. If you can't change any thing, then note the below.
That's a good suggestion. I tried moving the batt pack right up to the camera power leads but still had the same issue. remember, even just placing a uncharged cap anywhere on the + - rails will still cause the momentary camera blackout.
Ideally, the problem would go away if I didn't have to have all of the ground leads connected together. I could use two power supplies to completely isolate the camera power from everything else so that it's power wouldn't be interfered with. That's not possible with this design so i need to simulate the same thing. I need to make it so that the camera power is unable to experience any voltage drops or spikes and the same with current.