Really, you just don't know the whole conversation... to some there's no virtue in struggling with a kit lens when their time costs more than the difference in price: it may not make sense to a lot of struggling photogs in a way, but if someone's grossing a hundred bucks an hour, as a salesperson, I'd be *wasting their time* telling them to cheap out on something that won't do what they want.
I did work retail back in the says when automation wasn't something you'd take for granted in the 'pro' or more-expensive cameras, and then you'd maybe want to steer them toward something more user-friendly, but nowadays, it's almost *all* user-friendly if you turn a switch to green. A d90 isn't excess to a lot of people wanting to play photographer around their sports-star kids, and if I had the scratch, I wouldn't bother to hand my little sister a slow lens if I didn't have to, either.
(And, I mean, too, I dealt with a *lot* of these types of folks in the 80s, when I did work retail. For them, photography's hard enough without messing around with things they find 'cheap.' As a result there's like a million Super Programs and AE-1Ps and Nikon FA's out there nowadays... They ended up in a lot of closets, but it wasn't cause customers were unhappy.)
Last edited by Ratmagiclady; 12-17-2008 at 02:19 PM.