A method and apparatus for reducing speckle noise in an image of an object are disclosed. The method includes, placing the object in an interferometer at a first position along a beam path of an object beam, irradiating the object with the object beam, moving the object from the first position to a second position by longitudinally shifting the object along the beam path of the object beam, irradiating the object with the object beam at the second position. At each of the first and second positions a holographic image formed by interference between the object beam and a reference beam is recorded. An object image with reduced speckle noise is obtained by averaging the holographic images. Either an arithmetic mean or a weighted average may be used in the averaging of the holographic images.