My best friend gets a temp job every year taking photos at Sears during the Christmas season. She doesn't even have a camera, she takes all her pictures with her cell phone. She has worked for them for 3 years now.
Man if I went there and saw her take out her cell phone to take the picture.... i would get up and walk away....
I think ababysean meant that her personal camera is a cell phone. When you go to Sears, the whole studio is setup with their equipment and preset so the photographer doesn't have to worry about anything but working with the clients. They don't expect photographers to provide own equipment.
When I applied for a job, they were actually quite taken by the knowledge I had in regard to photography. They mentioned that their business model assumes no photographic knowledge and I would have to understand that I would need to operate within those guidelines (meaning don't try to change the studio to my own preferences). Stay on the scripted process. That's fine since I understood that I'm not the only one working in their studios.
m glad I have the knowledge I do now... So when my gf wants to take me to walmart to get some pictures done.... I can go there ahead of time and ask them about the camera they use the lens they use and the lighting they use and see if they are actually decent... I'm leaning towards finding a real photographer. It just makes me feel disapointed with walmart and all those walk in photo places....
You might as well just go to a "real" photographer and save the hassle. Most of those shops aren't going to be up to your specs I can say that for sure. The Flash! studio I went to was equipped with an Old (but still good) Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n with a Tamron zoom lens. IT IS A BUSINESS catering to the typical (not photographer) family with certain expectation of price. You can't expect these studios to fork over that type of cash for equipment, keep it updated year to year, and expect a good return on investment. I can say that you can see a decent investment put into the studio itself (strobes, computers, backdrops, props). I think this is proper as these are the equipment that actually makes a big difference in a studio environment.
With that said, there have been many discussions on studio lighting versus camera+lens. If the studio lighting is done properly, most "normal" lenses will perform and deliver good results. Its the LIGHTING that is important. We've seen many examples (the Iphone one comes to mind) of this here.
Now if you were shooting sports (moving objects, bad lighting), natural lighting (low light, high contrasts, high specular highlights, CA etc..) where lighting conditions are less than ideal, that's were expensive/exotic lenses obviously will out perform. This is simply not the case for studios where light is controlled (hopefully).
