The older Olympus cameras were hell on batteries, not sure about the newer ones. My newer camera can get 200 or so shots.
Good low discharge NiMH are designed for (and work better than anything else) in fully functional modern digital cameras. There may be a few exceptions, but in general you will never do better with alkalines. This assumes the batteries are good and the camera doesn’t have some shorts.
In extreme cold temps lithium AAs are a better choice, but I don’t think that applies here.
This is predicated on good quality brand batteries and chargers. There are a lot of crappy batteries out there that can burn you. I use Duracell low discharge NiMH in my cameras and they last 300-400 shots, even in cold weather. I don’t use the LCD very much so that helps, but with alkalines I would get 50 shots tops. The batteries wear out after 1-2 year under heavy use. I shoot 10,000+ images a year.
Most modern cameras are pretty good with battery use. There are industry standard tests that rate the number of shots you can expect to get from a camera and I don’t know of a single AA camera that is rated at less than 200 shots with NiMH batteries.
Weird. It’s the exact opposite for me. Most devices, alkaline AAs are better, but with the digital cameras, we’re talking 5x life for NiMHs. (edit: and it looks like Telemark has similar numbers. Some people have claimed as much as 10x the number of frames with NiMHs vs alkalines.) Perhaps the type of camera being used makes a difference.