NEC Unveils Noise Suppression for Optical Zoom

Typically when the word noise is thrown around in the photography world, it's referring to an unwanted effect that appears on your photos. This time though, it has to do with sound.

If you've used a point-and-shoot camera to capture video, you've probably run into the noise problem. Everything's fine until you zoom and then the motors kick in and your sound is ruined. The optical zoom on most cameras is ridiculously loud.

The new noise suppressing technology from NEC counteracts this by identifying the sound made by these mechanisms and then removing them from audio recorded by the microphone. It automatically adjusts too, so it's easy to adapt from camera to camera.

NEC says that the first camera to use this is the Casio EXILIM EX-ZR10, and that this and other noise suppression technologies will be added to more cameras in the future.