What you said is true, to make consistently good pictures you need appropriate gear too, but saying photographer is only as good as his gear is a bit faulty. You can give best gear to a very skilled photographer and a non skilled one, you might see the difference there.
These days if you shoot at ISO 200 there is almost no difference between the pictures produced by any cameras, given you expose well. The differentiating factor is obviously the lens but the most critical thing to any photography is the quality of light. If you have good quality light even a point and shoot can produce images as good as a pro dslr. A pro dslr will show its might in difficult lighting conditions but this understanding of light is critical to producing any good pictures.
Another thing that is completely not addressed these days is the importance of post processing skills. It is almost as important as your gear itself. You may have the best of the gear but if you are zero at PP your images will look pretty boring. On the other hand if your PP skills are good and you have a camera with at least RAW capacity, you can produce amazing images.
So in the end, camera gear is important but your skill as a photographer is paramount.
Actually, I agree with Nikon, which is not to say that Nikon gear is the only good gear since there is a lot of good gear on the market today. This is why I agree.
When we shot film it made little difference what camera we used. The quality of the captured image had a lot to do with the film we selected. With digital our "film" is built into the camera's sensor and image processing algorithms. An inferior quality sensor can and likely will mean inferior quality images.
The came is a box on which you attach a lens. I once owned the 24-120/3.5-5.6 VR. It was a sick dog!! I sold it a couple of weeks after purchase. I now own the 24-120/4 VRand 24-70/2.8 VR. Did these lenses make me a better photographer than the earlier 24-120? Yes, they did because the images I created had higher IQ, and my clients rate my skills based upon the images they receive. I make better images (technically) with better gear, and while aesthetics counts a great deal so does technical IQ.
We are what we eat!
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Richard Weisgrau
http://www.weisgrau.com
Author of
The Real Business of Photography
The Photographer's Guide to Negotiating
Selling Your Photography
Licensing Photography
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