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having been told ad nauseum that what camera equipment you have makes no difference can some one please tell dumb old me why there are special lenses for this and newer (supposedly better) cameras every year? And why do people spend so much time discussing what they need for macro or landscape or potrait IF IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE?
I view it differently. Some skilled photographers will pick up any old bit of tat and make a creative image, but the subject tackled will be different. For example composition, the artists eye etc those work.
what happens is that it may only be valid as a web or 6x4 image rather than a poster sized piece of art.
A sports photographer may concentrate on other aspects of the sport rather than go for the decisive instant short 5 miles away.
Or the wildlife tog may suddenly develop an interest in elephants in the zoo rather than the lesser spotted reed warbler that you cannot get closer than 100 meters from. 
In short there are creative skills and there is kit. The creative person will out. The technician needs the good kit.
I gave you my own example, I had 3 images selected for an exhibition, but two selected were from a £60 compact, and plenty of my DSLR and £1000 lens images were not. In the eyes of the viewers the lower cost camera images said something of the situation that I had missed in the technically better shots. It is a failing in me re the SLR images rather than the kit.
This image was seen as offering more than a clean image like this. The latter image will print at A3, the first image at A4 is grainy, and falls apart above that.
Do you deliberately misunderstand everything people tell you? Is that how you earn your living.
Nobody said it makes no difference. What was said was that the photographer is more important and that it was possible to take excellent photos within the limitations of a less powerful camera.
Where to start...
macro
You can get as good a macro picture using a cheap Russian Helios lens on a set of screw thread extension tubes...total cost about £10 off ebay than you can using a top spec macro lens costing £400
Downside...it looks rubbish, it feels average, it takes more time to adjust because you have to switch tubes to change magnification. It doesn't work as well because it's all manual and if you extend you have to calculate the light loss etc.
Portrait
A really good portrait doesn't have to be razor sharp - some portrait lenses where made with soft focus filters built in. So you could get away with that cheap Helios lens and a 2x converter. Similar cost. It will be fine for photos up to 10x8 and certainly won't cause any form of discrimination on here.
Landscapes
you won't be able to compete with the ultra-wide boys without a wide-angle, so don't try...shoot less wide shots and concentrate on your composition.
I'm sure there are many more reasons / arguments I could think up and many more no doubt will.
I often use a 100mm prime lens - being a prime it means it limits me to that focal length, no wide angle or telephoto option.
is it a limitation..hell no I just take different shots.
There will always be a shot your equipment stops you from getting - move on get over it.
Depends...
A good tog can get something from nothing.. A bad tog can get nothing from the best camera out there.
Does the kit matter, yes.. for sports, wildlife, weddings. There is somethings that needs good kit. Low light weddings. Fast moving sports. Getting close to the wildlife.
Is the kit the be all and end all... No. As Pete says there is ways around some of those expensive solutions but it may be a compromise. Do you buy that 300 F2.8 or make do with the 80-400mm F5.6 and use a higher ISO with some noise filters... Swings and rounabouts. Even the advancement in new cameras with good high ISO without the noise once associated is a big step forward in that you may be able to get away with a 5.6 lens in low light where before you needed a high end lens....
Try telling a 3 Michelin star chef that his food is so good because he's using very good knives and saucepans. Then duck!
I didn't say skill doesn't count but what has been thrown at me all afternoon in varying degrees of vociferousness is that the camera MAKES NO DIFFERENCE at all and one must just go out and in no time at all you will be taking photos to rival any taken by any equipment.
To anyone with half a brain cell this is patently not true otherwise any one who goes out and buys a better lens or a specialist lens or a better camera is just an idiot who is wasting their money.
If we can agree that there ARE limitations to equipment which gets us to discussing 'how to take the best picture with what you have' which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT discussion ... then we can start discussing what place is there for people who have limited equipment on this site.
And if some one else tells me to 'just go and practice' I swear I will scream so loud you will hear me all the way from Africa. I want a bet I take more photos more often than most people and my photography has improved leaps and bounds in the last year. HOWEVER I am constantly frustrated that I can't take photos like I see every day on this site which means one of two things ... either I am a totally sh!t photographer or I limited by my camera.
Now as I am not an idiot I can see that I am limited in what I can with my camera. I can't take macro images so sharp you can count the facets in the eye of a fly. I can't take wide angle landscape shots. I can't take close ups of that bird because I don't have a 10 million x zoom.
So .... let me ask again .... what category is there on this site that I can take photos that are good enough given the limitations of my camera or that I can aspire to be good enough to compete in if I go and 'practice' some more.
No one is brave enough to actually admit that there are limitations .... every one just wants to jolly every one along and say 'oh just go and practice' and not be realistic and say to a person ... "listen pal you are never going to get that shot with that camera". You need to go and buy ........ And that is just not fair ... because it sets you up for disappointment. You are left feeling that you are just not good enough in the first place and never will be good enough no matter what camera you get because no matter how hard you try you just can't get the shot to come out looking some of the photos on here.
And I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way. MOST people just don't come out and say so.
Tell
Quote: Try telling a 3 Michelin star chef that his food is so good because he's using very good knives and saucepans. Then duck!
Try telling some one who just spent ££££ on the latest newest brightest piece of equipment that he just wasted his money because it is the photographer not the equipment
Then DUCK
The P50 can make a very adequate cam for street photography, but is probably better suited to portraiture, other genres will impose limitations on you when using the P50... they can be overcome, to an extent, by approach and creativity, but yes, there will be limitations.
Maybe somebody should perform a study of the equipment used to take the ePz competition and/or award winning photos over the past few years. I am willing to bet a good percentage were not taken on top of the range kit.
Quote: Where to start...
macro
You can get as good a macro picture using a cheap Russian Helios lens on a set of screw thread extension tubes...total cost about £10 off ebay than you can using a top spec macro lens costing £400
Downside...it looks rubbish, it feels average, it takes more time to adjust because you have to switch tubes to change magnification. It doesn't work as well because it's all manual and if you extend you have to calculate the light loss etc.
Portrait
A really good portrait doesn't have to be razor sharp - some portrait lenses where made with soft focus filters built in. So you could get away with that cheap Helios lens and a 2x converter. Similar cost. It will be fine for photos up to 10x8 and certainly won't cause any form of discrimination on here.
Landscapes
you won't be able to compete with the ultra-wide boys without a wide-angle, so don't try...shoot less wide shots and concentrate on your composition.
I'm sure there are many more reasons / arguments I could think up and many more no doubt will.
And Pete .... there are three very good reasons why I don't go this route. One I live in South Africa far off the beaten track. Photographic equipment is VERY expensive here (at least double what you pay in the UK). What I just bought myself on Ebay was a Nikon L100 which after much humming hawing seemed the best camera I could get for my money. I just could not afford anything better.
Second is that by the time I have bought second hand in the UK (conveniently my sister lives there) (because second hand stuff is rarer than hen's teeth her AND same price issues as new) and it has been sent on to me in the post I have absolutely NO recourse if there is something wrong with it when I get it and I simply cannot afford to shrug my shoulders and try again.
The third reason is that when I researched new vs second hand when I got my first camera almost without fail everyone said if you can rather get a new camera because you don't know how many photos the person took and the camera has a life span or the shutter or something wears out. And having done exactly that to a second hand camera I got from my sister I wasn't prepared to take that chance. Again I can't afford to.
So ... which categories of photos can I reasonably expect to be good enough to compete against the best with sufficient practice with either my P50 or L100?
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