I can play a $5,000 guitar just as badly as a $100 guitar, but in the hands of someone with a little bit of skill and practice that $100 guitar will sing.
The best camera in the world is the one you have with you. It doesn't matter if you have a $50,000 medium format body if it is sitting on the shelf at home. The rest comes down to composition starting with your aperture choice, following through with a small list of easy to remember items that will help you push whatever camera you have to your creative limits.
This is a photograph I took with a Nikon D3000 and the cheap 55-200 DX lens. That's a bottom of the line DSLR camera body and a cheap $200 lens, yet it still performed excellently when asked.
There are two basic composition techniques in play for this photograph. The first is the rule of thirds, the second is the use of leading lines, if you've read any photography books then you've been introduced to those concepts (I suggest you read mine, which is super cheap for the Kindle, but I'm slightly biased). There are two not so obvious composition techniques in play, too. First is the use of a telephoto lens. Shot on the longer side of the lens (116mm according to the metadata, as it's been a few years and I don't remember), the scene is compressed from back to front, making the distances appear shorter, but it also stacks the mountains in the background on each other more tightly than if a wider angle (shorter focal length) had been used. The next is using a moderate aperture. Aperture is one of the three basic components in determining the photograph's depth of field. In other words, how much or how little is in focus.
The old saying is "f/8 and be there" and it still holds true. This was shot at f/6.3, which for an APS-C (crop sensor) camera is a good "throw away" aperture, something that is middle of the road in terms of aperture size. So the front third of the photograph is in focus, the back third is slightly out of focus and I think it works for this composition.
Now, how is this a bad photograph? I cut off the road edge on the right, if I shot it today I would use a slightly smaller aperture, perhaps f/11. I would also shoot from a lower position and use a little more zoom. I would definitely use a polarizer screwed onto the end of my lens (which I didn't have for that lens at the time).
What does the photograph lack due to the camera quality and more importantly the lens quality? Sharpness, color detail and overall resolution. Sharpness is more dependent on the quality of your lens than anything else in the modern DSLR world, the rest is all camera. Compare the color and detail above with the photograph below:
This was shot with a Nikon D800 and a Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 lens. The lens alone cost more than the entire setup used to take the first photograph (and there would be enough left over to buy some accessories). Is it a better photograph? Maybe, maybe not, it really depends on who is looking at it and what they like. It does have better sharpness, color depth and a much higher resolution. The first photograph I would feel comfortable printing out to about 11x14 on high quality paper, the second photograph I would feel ok printing 8ftx6ft, or practically however large I cared to print it.
The Sigma lens, besides costing more than the entire first camera setup, it also
weighs more than the entire first camera setup. Hiking a D800 with three f/2.8 lenses and a good tripod/head assembly is very heavy and that makes it easy to leave in the vehicle when stepping out for a hike, which brings us back to the beginning.
The best camera in the world is the one you have with you.
