a longtime d7000 & d5100 user's thoughts

I took the time to read your post and see that you took care to try to create the most fair and even test environment you could for this evaluation.  No matter what comes of this post, from what you state, you must have learned a great deal about photography from Mako and others given the time you've invested into extensive research and reading here (hopefully other resources too)... good for you!  No matter what you choose to do, hopefully you feel you've learned and are willing to continue to do so.

Obviously, your 7000 picture is well OOF (I too find the 5100 OOF.. in fact when I first saw it, I thought it was going to be the OOF example), but that said, could you perform very same test, using the very same environment, but manually focus with both cameras and present the results here again?  Or, simply take a shot with the 7000 in AF and then take another picture manually focused and post the pictures.

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D7000, D300s, D80, 18-200 VRII, Nikon 50mm 1.8 / 1.4,
Tamron 90mm, Nikon 80-200 2.8 AF-D,
Sigma 10-20mm - Sigma 17-50 2.8 - SB-800
50mm 1.8D
Gear up..... Get out there!!!