If you managed to take that picture WITH that lens, that would be awesome
(since that would be doing the impossible).

Regardless, it's still a very nice lens, but I'm still going off topic, so...
I hate to repeat the words of other people that already replied, but using expensive or new hardware or software isn't a prerequisite to making a good (or great) AMV. What I've found is that the more effort you put into a video is worth more than the amount of money you spend on programs and equipment.
Prodigi is a good example of what you can do even with older hardware (I cringed when I heard how slow his editing computer was). If you have tons of patience, some skill with an image editing program (like MS Paint), and a video editing software that accepts still images for footage (like WMM), remember that
original animation videos have won VCAs before; and those take a lot of effort.
There are people with Adobe Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop that cannot put out a video that is comparable to the better videos here. Admittedly, it may not totally be due to lack of effort, as AtomX said, creativity is part of the equation. This is partly why there may be tons of Naruto videos, some very solidly edited, but for one to stand out from the crowd now it would have to blow your socks off to get major notice.
Look at the 2006 VCAs. All videos using Naruto exclusively (this means it doesn't include other anime) released in 2005 were eligible. This equates to almost 3500 possible qualifying videos (including all videos that use Naruto, we end up with well over 4000 videos). Assuming that every one of these videos were not disqualified due to the editor not participating or for other reasons, you would figure that a Naruto video would inevitably win a VCA. In fact 2 did: Phenomenon and Naruto's Technique Beat (and a few others that incorporated Naruto footage among other anime).
Fast forward to the 2007 VCAs. We have approximately the same amount of eligible Naruto videos, plus a slightly smaller pool of total videos. But no Naruto only video won (only 2 winning videos even incorporated Naruto footage and these 2 videos could have been done without Naruto). Consider that Naruto started TV broadcasting in the US and other countries in late 2005, with relatively cheap R1 DVDs being available for purchase and rent for getting footage from, you'd expect someone would step up and produce a worthy video. And there were, but...
As had been noted, the creativity to combine Haibane Renmei footage with Rumbling Hearts (Kimi ga Nozomu Eien) to make a unique concept helped
Reflections capture a bunch of VCAs (snatching away category wins from many other great videos).
Sure, using costly, more advanced programs can help make certain types of videos faster or easier to create. But they aren't required. And they don't have to cost money as trythil's video in his last link is proof of (and I'm not counting using illegal downloaded copies of Premiere, Vegas, Photoshop, etcetera in this argument).