I've found the Tokina 100mm to be very nice on my Nikon bodies. And it's quite a good deal.

put the OS, and your programs on the SSD. Photoshop in particular needs to read/write to the hard drive a lot while you work on an image. You will also experience much shorter waits when you start up your computer.

For a second drive, consider it being outside of the laptop, and keep your photo libraries there. I use a small RAID (4 drives, but there are fairly cheap ones out there with 2 drives) also have backup drive, this can be big and slow and set your system to backup daily.

your next purchase:

https://www.amazon.com/Sentences-Paragraphs-Mastering-Important-Writing-ebook/dp/B0099AIFFO

I sometimes "farm out" the editing portion of the process, mostly on real estate shoots where they want the final images within 12 hours of the shoot. I'm just starting in this area so the projects I've been involved with so far are for properties roughly in the $500,000 range (which in the Boston are isn't a lot). So, the projects don't bring me a lot in fees, when I send the images to a subcontractor, I'm paying in the $75-$100 range for 8-10 shots. It really comes down to the editor/retoucher being really knowledgable with LR/PS and very fast. I've tried a few people who had talent, but couldn't perform the task fast so it wasn't adding up for them.

There are various skills required, and I'm very sensitive to the professionalism, as well as corporate structure of my vendors (If you have business insurance your "employment" won't get figured into my insurance costs).

I was a very early user of Photoshop (got my tutorial from one of the developers). and been using it in the graphics/retouching world ever since. In just the last 18 months I've gone over to LR for my photo processing. I find processing from RAW and the fine tuning of images is much better. Although you could get the same results in Photoshop, (isn't there about three ways to do just about everything in PS anyways?) it just seems to be more intuitive in LR. and although I didn't initially use LR for cataloguing features, it has influenced, and improved my catalogue system. Still use PS for certain things, and still use it quite a bit for working with images that are going into the page layout programs I use daily, but for photography, I use it a lot less now. So from an old time Photoshop guy, I'd recommend you jump in with both feet.

I've found that the repairs and return of equipment are completed much quicker than the quoted timeline. I think they are just covering themselves as they don't really know what the issue is at this point, and once handed off to shipper it is out of their hands.

If you are able to obtain permission from the performers and the venue there are is a lot of information on past posts for photographing techniques, settings, etc. If you are talking about taking a shot from your seat, I'd suggest putting away the iphone and enjoy the music.

I've had it happen, usually when a source file has been moved.

That Schlitz/portrait is pretty darn good image quality for Tri-X 400!

I am friends with a lot of professionals having been in the ad business for 30+ years and many are posting old photos on social media these days, and the film quality really had a look back then. I kind of like it, but it would be rejected, or at least relegated to a "nostalgia look", in these digital days.

shoot manual only for the month of January.

it's the three that you would actually use that are of value. I think a lot of these suppliers throw in a lot of filler as shoppers will often be swayed by the "more is better" argument. I sometimes will end up with more that I want because I'll purchase a package to get one I saw reviewed or upon recommendation, eventually I end up deleting a lot to get rid of clutter.

That Neil Van Neikerk site is awesome, thanks for the info.

Check out Ken Rockwell's review. There is a link on the page with a downloadable file of his recommended settings too. Bookmark the page, it's a great resource to go back to.
https://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d7100.htm

Once you are receiving payment for your work there should always be a signed contract involved. Standard procedure is to state that you own copyright of all images(get signed releases from anyone in the shots, and any identifiable real estate) and you are selling "usage" of the image, not the ownership of images. I then also put the stipulation that I can use images for marketing purposes. Whether you retain the right to resell, or to sell as stock, usually has a lot to do with compensation. If I'm getting paid fairly, I stipulate that images will be offered exclusively, and not be resold while usage contract is in order (usually between one and five years). Many clients insist on further stipulation that images will never be sold as stock, or resold to any company with their industry.

There's a lot of nuance, so you may want to look into getting some template contracts and releases. There are organizations that supply them to their members like PPA and such.

On my D7000 I now have it set to shoot RAW and basic jpeg, but I have the second card defined as a full back up, so both RAW and jpegs are on both cards. Did have it set up as you state in the past, but once had the card with the RAW go bad, and only had jpegs from a music festival I shot. Always regretted not having the best files available for that event.