If you want to make impressive photographs you can't have one and not the other. In my view the equipment makes your ideas possible. Technique makes them reality. In the .gif below you can see how far away the eagle was from me, about 300 yds., I'm guessing. That wide shot is at 400mm. The lens and camera are sharp enough that the resulting extreme close-up looks pretty good. The daylight was enough that I could use a very fast shutter and small aperture, 1/320 at f/9.0 which gave me a good depth of field at that distance. My Canon 5Ds made those 50mp. very handy for this finished product.
