I would be on jobs with some clients kind of giving my less than impressive looking camera gear a bit of a concerned glance. But the final product from this old gal was amazing. The moral of the story was that equipment does not make the photographer. Composition, light, depth of field, movement, colour, emotion, timing and decades of experience will never be replaced with technology. But technology combined with all of the before mentioned qualities and you are now talking about what a professional photographer brings to every single image they take.

If given the choice between a good photographer with a old beat up camera  or a amature  photographer with top of the line professional DSLR i know I would go with the good photographer above the good equipment any day.

The ability to capture breath taking imagery takes years if not decades and no camera is going to you that kind of know how. Often at weddings I would have people come up to me with their camera and show me a image they had taken of the wedding and say "what do you think?, I should be a professional photographer" and I normally say "yeah great image but before you can be a professional photographer you need to make every image that good every time". This is the reality of being a professional photographer.