Droid 4 - Cannot reset, camera locks

Question

The camera app locks up when I try to take a picture. I press the shutter button and it turns blue on-click, but then never releases and takes the picture. I followed Dr. Google's advice and deleted the last few pictures. It worked for one picture and then started locking up again, so I cleared all of the photos off of my phone. The camera still locks up every single time I try to take a picture. There is tons of internal storage left on the phone.
My next step would be resetting the phone to factory defaults, but when I do that I get the "shutting down" message but it never shuts down. Never. I force reboot and try again. Again, it never gets past the "shutting down" message, doesn't clear the phone, and I force reboot to a phone that still doesn't have a working camera app.
FFS. I've had it barely a year and the camera hasn't been working for months.
Advice?

Answer 1

Rather than setting to factory defaults (and that didn't seem to work anyway!) try a system cache clear...
Power down phone
Hold volume up/down & power simultaneously until you see the Boot Mode Selection Menu
Use volume down to navigate to 'Recovery', use volume up to select
Should see screen with triangle and exclamation point next to an Android
Press volume up/down simultaneously to go into system recovery
Use volume rocker to navigate to 'wipe cache' and use power button to select
Once finished, use volume rocker to navigate to 'reboot system now' and use power button to select
It won't erase any settings or information on the phone, but it may help the camera glitchiness.  If it doesn't, and you are still under warranty, you can get it replaced, as long as there is no other physical damage to the phone.