The quality doesn't look of a 600 dollar camera, I think my android phone takes better phones to be honest.
Hopefully it just needs a tripod.
No, he's stated that he's new and using manual settings. For what it's worth, with those two things combined, most people don't do this well. For the most part, the camera doesn't matter (anyway, a $600 camera is almost guaranteed to be at least a "pretty good" camera).
Look at this photo I took with my $400 - $500 2004 camera, manual settings:
There you have it. Ignore the price tag, look at the picture. In the end, it's the photo that matters. Expensive cameras are nice, but not required. Also, stop telling him to use a tripod! A tripod would not work for more than 70% of these photos in the first place! Guess what I didn't use for that picture?
A tripod.
