Everybody knows that "noise" is an unpleasant or unwanted sound, but "noise" also is a pattern of flecks, blotches, or color spots that mar the quality of digital pictures. Image noise can be compared to the electronic static that gives a television picture a snowy appearance. Photos riddled with noise look unnatural and lack sharpness and fine detail.

This reduction in noise gives photos of kids frolicking on a bright summer day an extra crispness, but the system's biggest benefit is scene-mood preservation and the natural feel it lends to low-light photos.

Take, for example, a common picture scene: the birthday party. No one wants to leave the lights on for the "Happy Birthday" song but keeping the lights off requires the use of flash, which certainly ruins the mood of the candle-blowing ceremony. In order to preserve the impact of an image of a darkened room illuminated solely by candlelight, picture takers should disengage their camera's flash. But doing so introduces another problem: without the extra light provided by the flash, low-light photos fall victim to blur.

Herein lies the magic of Fujifilm's Real Photo Technology. With noise reduced at the source, Real Photo Technology cameras -- like the FinePix V10 and FinePix F30 -- take pictures at very high light sensitivities (commonly referred to as ISO settings). These high sensitivities greatly reduce the need for a flash and without it, skin tones look natural and background detail pops.

Moreover, Fujifilm matches high light sensitivities (the FinePix F30 can shoot at ISO equivalencies as high as 3200, far and away the highest full-resolution sensitivity setting for a compact digital camera) with faster shutter speeds for less blur in photos. Marrying high light sensitivities with faster shutter speeds is a tried-and-true technique used by advanced photographers to reduce blur that works not only in camera shake situations, but also when the photo subject is in motion -- an additional anti-blur benefit of Real Photo Technology.

Consumers who can't tell the difference between ISO and a UFO can still realize the benefits of Fujifilm's Real Photo Technology. The cameras do all of the work for the user, automatically. The FinePix F30 even has a handy "Picture Stabilization" dial position for the best anti-blur benefits.

Digital noise adversely affects the quality of many digital pictures and the bottom line is that no noise is good noise. Fujifilm identified this problem and has been working diligently to solve it. The result of the effort is Real Photo Technology and digital pictures are better because of it.

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