Well it has happened to me before, did you fix it already?
If you did than hopefully it was just a one time thing, if you cant fix it than it is not normal >.>
Welcome to Droid Forums!! Maybe before doing a hard reset you could try clearing data on the camera app.
Not sure on the exact path, since I do not know which device you have, but it should be something like this: Go into Settings > Applications > Manage Apps (or just an "All" tab), look for the camera and select it. Then proceed to clear data, force stop, and try opening it and using it.