Hey All,
I think the only correct answer to a what camera did you use question is this:
My eyes
followed by:
I'm a photographer - what is a camera?
-Ed-
There is no "right" answer. The camera is not irrelevant, but not in the way they are marketed. I think it is very illuminating to see how photographers work.
American Photographer did a wonderful piece on Richard Avadon a long time ago. They opened his closet and took a picture of it. There were three cameras: one 8x10 view camera with a 300mm lens and two Rolleiflex TLRs. This man sustained his entire career with three cameras all with normal lenses.
American Photographer also did a monograph of the work of William Albert Allard called the Photographic Essay. Unusually for this type of book, they document the photographer's thoughts on camera types, his equipment, and mark how much he uses certain focal lengths. While he certainly carries/carried more than I do, he still could break the majority of his work down into a very simple setup.
And the equipment choice does impact the aesthetic of the photographer's work. Look at the career of Mary Ellen Mark. You can see the shifts in her style as she goes from 35mm, to 6x6 medium format, to 4x5, to 6x7. You can see how artificial lighting impacts the work.
Now, the thing is, you don't copy the gear list of Mark Ellen Mark and become Mary Ellen. But the look she gets cannot simply be broken down into equivalent focal lengths and taken with any kind of camera.
Cameras are sold based on features. A camera with 100 functions must be twice as good as a camera with only 50. AF speed, frames per second, megapixels, ISO, and a host of specs that are really marginal are all used to sell cameras. Folks like to say they like all the automation because they can focus on making the picture. Well, all the automation in the world does not make you an Avadon. Pick up a copy of the World History of Photography and with all the changes in camera technology, the one thing that is constant is the high-level of the imagery, regardless of style. Technology is not making better images, just different ones.
Photography has not become effortless because of the automation. Photography is effortless because I understand and control the process without having to think that hard--just as a writer does not have to worry about technical issues like grammar and spelling (spell checkers don't make you a better writer, they just make you
appear like a less poor one).