I used to be totally obsessed with gear. When I was an undergraduate student at UCLA, I worked in IT as my work-study job and spent far too much time on gear forums. I would be like the thousands of other members discussing inane matters like the corner-sharpness of Canon-zoom L lenses vs Canon prime lenses. I spent too much time studying “bokeh characteristics” of different lenses. I spent too much time looking at 100% crops of high-ISO samples of different cameras.
What was the result of all that? Well first of all, it made me depressed as hell because I could never afford all of those expensive cameras and lenses (especially as a student). In-fact, it discouraged me from going out and actually taking photographs –as I felt that my gear was inadequate in creating good images.
However over the years, I have found how little gear has to do with creating memorable images. To think that Henri Cartier-Bresson made some of his masterpiece images in the early 1920′s with a primitive Leica and ISO 25 film! But yet nowadays we bitch and moan about our cameras not being able to go above ISO 1600.
At the end of the day, we should follow Klein’s advice and don’t worry so much about the camera or technical settings. The most important thing is going out and producing images.