Camera.PhotoCapture is null

In my Android app I am trying to manage the state of the camera to switch between SINGLE and GPS_LAPSE. Somehow when making the transition back to GPS_LAPSE from SINGLE, the camera’s photomode becomes null. (as retrieved with camera.component<Camera.PhotoCapture>() where camera in this case is a MainCamera)
The documentation says that when using camera.component it will return null if the component is not available. Even with my retry logic, it continues to be null. Is there a way to find out why this is the case?