Martin O'Donnell pointed out an article by Dave Gussow of the St. Petersburg Times that talks about a number of new developments in the digital camera and photo printing businesses that were publicized at PMA 2006 earlier this month in Orlando.

The main focus of this article is that digital camera manufacturers have discovered that women are the main photographers in many traditional families, that they purchased a slim majority of the digital cameras in 2005, and that they buy almost 60 percent of the photo paper to be used in printers. Many of the marketing approaches discussed at this industry trade show were designed with this research in mind.

The article goes on to say that women prefer shiner, more stylish cameras, while men like cameras with black cases. Kodak promotional materials say that women focus on features like the print size cameras can produce, rather than more technical specifications like megapixel resolution and zoom lenses.

I find this type of market intelligence very interesting, but I wonder if everything the digital camera manufacturers' research tells them is actually correct? I don't think I ever cared if my digital camera was black or silver, although I've owned cameras of each type. All I want in a digital camera is something that takes good pictures, has understandable controls, has a reasonably fast picture-taking cycle, and is fairly compact. I think cameras like the Canon Powershot SD450 do pretty well on all of those criteria.

Who cares what color the camera's body is? If you do, I'd love to know why.