The explanation, according to the director of the US-based Digital Photography Advisory Service, Charles LeCompte, is that women are generally less comfortable with technology, and are therefore more attracted to trusted brands.

Lyra looked into the photo-taking preferences of men and women and found that women prefer direct printing from their camera, and the Kodak EasyShare system in which the camera docks directly onto the printer satisfies that requirement. And it seems that women think that one camera and one docking station are enough and that all the other equipment that goes with digital photography -- computers, imaging software and inkjet printers -- is surplus to their requirements. The idea is clearly catching on, because manufacturers like Canon are also pushing one-button printing solutions direct from the camera.

Here in the Image research labs, we can confirm that women’s expectations of Kodak are generally fulfilled. Kodak digital cameras are easy to use and do produce sharp, saturated images straight from the camera. It’s only when they’re enlarged that shortcomings emerge: the sharpening, contrast and colour saturation are aggressive and would not suit a fastidious photographer planning on making A3 prints. But as applied technology, developed for a consumer with particular demands, the Kodak range fits the bill.

What is fascinating, however, is that women can’t know that until they buy and try the camera, so there is clearly something else at work in making them prefer Kodak. No doubt Kodak’s history as the company that democratised – and simplified - photography still affects the perception of its products.

As the official Kodak history tells it: “With the slogan ‘you press the button, we do the rest’, George Eastman put the first simple camera into the hands of a world of consumers in 1888. In so doing, he made a cumbersome and complicated process easy to use and accessible to nearly everyone.” For more than a century that company philosophy has been impressed on the ordinary consumer. Kodak is a much more technologically sophisticated company that this would suggest, but in the shop the famous red and yellow logo promises ease of use and consistency of output.

Right from the beginning Kodak camera advertisements featured women models using the Brownies. Although there were great women pioneers in photography it was not an art form with broad feminine appeal because it involved messing around in total darkness with toxic chemicals. That was definitely men’s work. But with the invention of the Box Brownie women became the photographic chroniclers of the family. The image of the Kodak brand has always been domestic.