I once had to help judge a couple of photo contests where members of the general public sent in pictures. They were taken on everything from low-end telephones to high-end mirroess rigs. 99.95% of then were utter crap, regardless of the platform. Poorly lit. Out of focus. Half the subject out of frame.
People will spend $3,000 on new camera gear when they should be spending $200 on a basic photography class at a camera store or community college.
Bought a DLSR camera a while back and enrolled in a weekly photography class at a film school for a year. Now I barely touch this camera. It's pretty bulky and I can take equally nice shots using my smartphone camera (good enough for sharing with friends and for own memories).
The only times I would want to use a DLSR camera over my smartphone is when I intend to make a big print of the photo, so I care a lot more about the resolution.
You cannot get a decent amount of control with a phone. Want to shoot at 1/15 and get partial and intentful motion blur? Want to do night time street photography, shoot at 1/60, 2.0f and cap the iso at 3200 max?
A phone may be OK for a selfie, but any kind of real artistic expression beyond really basic photography concepts and you won't get far.
> Poorly lit.
Better cameras capture more light.
> Out of focus.
Better cameras auto-focus faster and choose target points better.
> Half the subject out of frame.
High resolution cameras can capture an image for later cropping without early zooming.
Tools are rarely a problem. The person using the tool is more often the problem.
This is the equivalent of someone wondering if they should the latest MacBook or the latest Surface to do some very basic sysadmin.
It doesn't matter!
Said otherwise, with total result as the sum of contributing factors like tools_factor + skill_factor + luck_factor + …, the partial derivative of tool is not significant.
Maybe the conversion was not about achieving or improving a task, but idle talk for social purposes?
Anything can be meaningless if you axiomatically don't care about it.
Personally, I find no value in that, but I respect differences of tastes.
Skill
Kit
Opportunity
Those are the factors which make Nat Geo photos look like they do.
The glass absolutely limits potential and conversely good lenses can claw back a bit from disadvantage in the other aspects.
Ask yourself how many Nat Geo photos were taken with a $100 Yongnuo 85mm lens versus a $15,000 Canon 200-400.
Blessedly the topic of conversation changed.