Having images which display your products at their best is vital. Visitors to your sales page don’t get to see the products in the flesh, as they do in a shop. So the images, ultimately, sell the product (unless you’re dealing in branded goods). Poor photography means poor sales!
I’ve never had photographs done by a professional, we do it all in-house. There are multiple options, some you can even put together yourself. We have a light tent with two lamps, which both contain 3 5000k bulbs (from memory!). The images are then edited in Photoshop. This, in my opinion, gives perfect images (for web use) and the costs involved were a lot less than what a professional would charge.