I think that nails it neatly.
I've spent some years going through exactly the same process with music. Who makes the good guitars? Fender, Gibson. Yamaha. PRS. Martin, Taylor, Maton? They all do. There's a saying "Tone is in the fingers" and it's true. Gear lust ( Gear Acquisition Syndrome or GAS as we call it) is rampant - and having bought 14 or 15 guitars I'm certainly not knocking it - but by far the most important part of the equation is the player.
I confidently expect that photography will prove to be the same. The
Canon 600D I bought is 'entry level' but photographers in the past have taken brilliant photos with much inferior gear than a 600D. It only has "kit
lenses" which are usually reckoned to be pretty ordinary, and I have certainly taken some rubbish with them. But now and again I fluke something which gives me a glimpse of what the system is capable of in the hands of somebody who knows what they're doing. Even when they're cropped way down from an original image, the clarity and detail is just incredible.
The big difference between me and a decent photographer is that they could do it time after time, but I just fluke it occasionally.
So don't sweat the decision too much. Next year there will be a model out that purports to be better than the one you buy today, and even when you choose carefully you may never be 100% sure whether one of the other
lenses on offer might have been fractionally better for a specific shot . But these are probably fairly small margins compared with the difference you can make with decent skill and knowledge. Of course, none of this will
stop me buying more
lenses etc long before I actually need too....
Good luck with your horse shots.
Cheers,
Chris
Here's a
Bee cropped out of an original image that was over
twelve times bigger! No bad for basic equipment operated by a rank novice. I'm sure that some of the people here could do much better again with the same camera, and do it over and over again too.