An analysis of camera noise is presented. We examine the class of cameras that are based on ionization sensors, which includes the most common charge-coupled device (CCD) and vidicon cameras. Camera signals are shown to be corrupted by direction-dependent stationary electronic noise sources and flucuations due to the statistical nature of the sensing process. The paper develops and tests a model of the inherent noises in cameras. These results are confirmed by measurement, and they suggest a locally stationary model of noise for adaptive signal processing.