Can amateur with pro gear shoot better photos than pros with cheap gear?

Probably not, but some pros are crap and some amateurs are brilliant…

I’ve seen a wedding photog rake 4K shooting with a Nikon D70, consistently. The camera is a tool, functional. It’s up to who’s holding it to do something with it.

Photography is about light, and I was waiting for the pros to use the lights that were sitting next to the backdrop all video. Spend your money on light, not camera/lenses.

A cheaper camera has it limitations in some situations. For example t2i vs 5d Mark III. I ran into a situation with my t2i without flash and i was indoors where I needed to go to 6400 iso for proper exposure, made the pics grainy. Lesson learned I should have brought my real gear.

Let’s skip the part where the terms “amateur” and “professional” are bullshit (they are about how one earn his living, not about the degree of knowledge) and go to the comparison.
From a technical point of view, the differences between a cheap and an expensive modern digital camera are usually evident in hard light conditions, not in a studio setting like here. Also, evidently the expensive gear was not used at its full potential, was it a requirement of the “test”? Anyway, all the images are edited here is a way that technical merits are nullified, we don’t have anything to talk about that.
From an artistic point of view, clearly one set is shoot almost randomly and the other one with good knowledge about angles, framing, poses. Yes, you can easily see the skill and knowledge.
Now what would be more interesting: switch the gear. Give the “amateur” the cheap camera and the pictures would be about the same, give the “pro” the expensive camera and you should see a difference. Of course, drop any restrictions for camera settings.

Depends on the photographer, the subject, the end goal. There are a lot of factors, but you don’t have to shoot with a $6k body to be good.

Seems these should have been provided without PS or LR editing.

I did a one-on-one with a professional photographer. At times we did alternate shots. I was shooting with a Nikon D5300 and a 18-140mm zoom; he had a Nikon 800 with a. 24-70mm zoom. He edited with Photoshop and I used Capture NX2. I sent him a combination of one of his shots beside mine….and he wanted to know which was his. I know on average his images are superior to mine. There are so many variables that he knows better than I do. A better camera just lets you push boundaries

All camera gear and lighting have a place and many of them have limitations. Light Is light, and for many situations a cheap flash will do the same as a profoto. Just like camera gear. But don’t fool yourself thinking this applies to all. In commercial product work you need dead sharp edge to edge. Only certain cameras and lenses will do. But at the same time an amateur would not know how to utilize this so it wouldn’t matter. That’s why they’re amateurs.

Gear just defines the theoretical limitations of what’s possible. Very rarely will one find themselves in an actual position where they are being held back by their gear. Much more common is the lack of creativity and vision that bottlenecks our progress. Of course, admitting such is an exercise in humility, which is so easily avoided in the modern era, especially when it is much easier to blame an intimate object incapable of defending itself on our failures.

Case in point: Think of all of the highly revered photographers of the past who made stunning images we still covet on gear, that by today’s standards, would be consumer grade at best. A true artist finds inspiration in limitations, where as a false artist finds only excuses.