my 1st answer to your question was to "buy one"
but seriously, define "great photo". i frequent a lot of photo forums/sites, & i see this term used WAAAY too much. i often see it on photos that i would personally consider anything but. tho, i will confess to being extremely critical when i look at an image - especially my own.
[spoiler]2 different photographers in the same conditions will produce different images. photographer has to be 1st - cuz that person is going to make a lot of decisions on everything else
photography is the capture of light, so clearly light has to be next
my next consideration is what lens to use - both in terms of quality, as well as speed of lens
& last on this list is camera. i have seen wonderful images taken with old polaroid cameras (the old pull-out-the-film type). the medium may have its limitations, but all of the pertinent aspects of a 'great photo' can be captured on [virtually] ANY camera. the key is to know what the limitations of your equipment are & what you need to do to adapt to them. (which, of course, takes you right back to #1)[/spoiler]
george raised the aspect of post processing, so i thought i would add a closing comment on that issue. pp is great, & many things can be done with an image in pp. however, if we are talking about photography, the 1 thing that pp CAN NOT DO, is create something in the image that wasn't captured. the data has to be there 1st. THEN, pp is a matter of maximizing the information from capture.
jp
