O.P.P. - Other People's Photo (Equipment)

We were in St. Louis last weekend and it was the first time all the (in-law's) grandkids were in one place since June so we booked a photo session at this portrait studio (which I won't name -- but it starts with "Portrait" and the rest sounds like "intonations").

Anyway, I'm always curious about the kind of gear that the studios use since they've all gone digital. I know that Sears' Portrait Studio near my house uses Nikon gear.

Anyway, this studio used Fuji Finepix DSLR equipment and Tamron XR lenses for its imaging gear and Photogenic PowerLights for its lighting





I also noticed a sensor above the doorway on each of the two studios which I think was for the radio slave on the top of the DSLR.



Another interesting tidbit is that this chain of studios doesn't sell you the RAW images, but if you order enough of them, they will give you a CD containing JPEGs good enough for desktop wallpaper, but not good enough for to get any prints from them any better than wallet size. The original RAW images are also stored on the CD in case you want to take the images to another one of their locations to get printed, but the RAW files are encrypted in their own proprietary format. From what I can tell the encryption is based on some customer information, possibly some store info, and another piece of info on the CD. I think the encryption occurs at the sales terminal and not at the DSLR level.