The open-circuit voltage of a NiCd or NiMH which has just come off of
a charger can be well above 1.2 voltl  During the charge cycle it
will rise to above 1.5 volts (or more depending on the charge rate)
before it hits the zero-rise inflection point which indicates full
charge.

It'll drop quite rapidly when discharged - to 1.3 almost immediately
and to 1.2 once about 20% of the charge has been withdrawn.  A normal
digital voltmeter has such a high input impedance that it wouldn't
load the battery down at all, and thus you'd probably read a rather
high open-circuit voltage for a cell that has just come off of a
charger.

I suspect that the original poster's camera has a low-battery detector
which is improperly calibrated or adjusted - most likely it's set for
alkaline cells rather than NiMH/NiCd.  A detector set in this mode
would tend to interpret the normal (plateau) voltage of a rechargeable
battery as if it were an alkaline battery which is just about to die.

The Nikon point-and-shoot cameras I bought for my wife's use have a
three-way battery-type selector in the menu - standard alkaline,
rechargeable, and AA lithium non-rechargeable.  As I understand the
manual, this setting controls the detection threshold for the
low-battery indicator.

From a quick look through the FinePix S7000 manual, it doesn't look as
if it has this degree of adjustability.  Unfortunate!

I've had varying luck with NiMH batteries... there does seem to be a
fair bit of brand-to-brand variability.  On the "poor" side, I had
disappointing results with Lenmar "NoMem" cells... even when freshly
charged they'd often "go flat" after about half of the expected use
(based on battery rating and the radio's known current draw during
operation).

The new generation of low-self-discharge NiMH (e.g. Uniross Hybrio,
Rayovac Hybrid, Sanyo Eneloop) seem to be much more consistent.  My
wife took her L11 point-and-shoot on vacation a couple of weeks ago
with a fully-charged pair of Hybrio batteries in it - when she got
back, the low-battery indicator was on the screen, the camera still
worked, and she'd taken over 500 photos (many with flash).

True.  As I read the data sheets, the internal resistance of a
standard alkaline is high enough that the high-current drain of a
digital camera is likely to result in almost half of the stored energy
being dissipated as heat in the battery.  I don't imagine that the
rechargeable alkaline batteries are any better, and might well be worse.

For the record, my rechargeables were all NiMH.

I got the same readings with two different voltmeters.

Re bulky casings:  Side note:  Those rechargeables - brand aside -
didn't fit in the battery caddies for my Vivitar 283 and 285 strobes. I
wish I'd slapped my dial calipers on 'em.  I *could* get them into the
caddy, actually, but then the caddy woudn't fit into its bay in the strobe
body.  The caddies were obviously engineered to be a very close fit; I
wouldn't have had that problem using them in a typical clock or Walkman or
something like that.  And not only were the batteries from various
manufactureres, but I tried aftermarket caddies from two sources *and* the
original Vivitar caddies, while scratching my head and mumbling
obscenities.

Good presumption.

They sure do when the others don't work.  Well, in terms of convenience;
as for economy, though, I suppose one could argue that since I couldn't
install the rechargeables in the strobes and they wouldn't work in the
camera, figuring their cost versus their *shelf life* would make them the
most economical -- they'd last for years.  :)

Will check.  Thanks!