[wdfifteen]

OK, can't sleep. I'm going to delve into this from my perspective. Me - I don't know all the jargon. I am neither a great technical photographer nor a creative art photographer, but I've take a LOT of pictures. Some have won awards.

The 7200 body you are looking at is great. It allows you to adjust the sensitivity of the sensor, time of exposure, and the aperture. You can do a lot of cool stuff just messing with these three adjustments. The problem with hand-held shooting is it takes away a lot of options for using these adjustments. That's why you need a good tripod. For example, you are shooting something and you can't get enough light into a dark part of the photo. A ham and egg photographer like me would put the camera on a tripod, slow the sensor down, stop the aperture down, turn the exposure time up, and "paint" some light into the dark area with a flashlight while the shutter is open. It ain't fancy, but you would be surprised what interesting effects you can get doing these kinds things.

I don't worry about diffraction and distortion and whatever the imperfections are of zoom lenses. After an hour of moving the damn tripod every time I want to reframe a photo I get tired and sloppy and screw it up anyway. If I only had a zoom lens I could reframe effortlessly. That's why I have zoom lenses.

Photoshop is endlessly entertaining. It's better than a video game. Once you learn the magic of the sliders in the "Camera Raw" mode you will sell your TV. The creative possibilities are endless, and if you are just trying to get a photo job out and there is one little flaw you can fix it without re-shooting everything.

A lot of great photos are taken by people with "pro-sumer" equipment who are creative, have a good eye, and know basic photography. A lot of boring photos are taken by photographers who know all the jargon and can quote you the diffraction and diffusion numbers for all their lenses.