A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses - or so say Nikon

As per Nikon's statement on their 'well known social networking site' page.

Obviously it's a statement aimed at selling camera gear but hard hats at the ready.

https://www.facebook.com/nikon/posts/10150316773294620

Devils advocate here, for a lot of styles of toggery the equipment is half if not more the battle. Fast lenses, quick frame rate and the like are big factors in sport and low light stuff.

An amazing tog with bottom end gear is not gonna produce the same results as a bang amateur in auto with top range gear in CERTAIN conditions. Same gear then the gap in quality will favour the better tog, as will conditions with good light no movement and a static shot with time to compose.

They're response:

I would agree I just thought the way the posted it was a bit off :/

Agree with Ste. Certainly you notice the difference in a massive way with wildlife - you can have the top end kit and be useless and in the right place still get fantastic shots - mind if your kit isn't up to par, you won't get the shots no matter what you do! Quality of image is dependent on quality of kit. Of course, the creativity, vision, composition, editing etc etc etc isn't - but the quality is.

xx

I didn't wan't to start a big 'is it the photographer or the gear' discussion as it's been done to death before.

I often browse the web for images taken with old gear and I'm amazed at some of the results people managed with gear considered old hat. Nothing better when you need to persuade yourself not to upgrade and save some cash.

That said I'm well aware of when certain kit limits me. Usually it's an issue of light and speed.

40D - Good reach but Autofocus struggles to track fast moving objects at 400mm as my lens is f5.6. A faster lens would help but a 400mm f2.8 lens would cost a bomb.

1D Mark 2 - Autofocus works well with the f5.6 lens but not having the crop factor of the 40D means things seem very far away. Cropping is limited because of its fairly low resolution.

When I'm resigned to max aperture and ISO is already up to it's useable limit - I'm stuffed if shutter speed is still too low for my subject. I can't just keep cranking up the ISO to silly values on the 40D or 1D Mark 2 to retain shutter speed like I could with some of the more modern offerings.

Landscapes are OK though - I love the fact that little apertures are order of the day and that fast expensive lenses aren't required. IS / VR isn't really a must either as normally it's a tripod job with camera safely kept at ISO 100.

Back on topic - I guess we all know what would make life easier or indeed make 'impossible' shots 'possible' but I was surprised that Nikon used the wording they did as that statement has long been a bone of contention.