How important is your $5000 camera?

It is comonly said that if you want to be the best, you got to have the best. Everyday more and more people are finding their way into the world of photography, either with a simple point and shoot or high-end DSLR. How many times have you seen a soccer mom carying a 20d only to take pictures of her two smiling children with cake on their faces on their birthday. I am not saying she doesn't have a right to have one, it is just funny that people have $1000+ cameras to do a job that a camera worth a few $100's would do. Even if you are a profesional photographer do you really need that $5000 camera with the $2000 lens. Ken Rockwell has written an excellent article here that explains this situation much more better than I could.I hear that newspapers are contemplating buying the newer and much more expensive cameras becuase the quaility they need could be acomplished by a much cheaper camera. So taking this article to heart, I will take a page from the book of this fine photographer and start my own cell phone picture collection.

Here are my first few pictures:

All I have done is convert these to black and white and adjust the levels a little. Not a bad start right?