@miles Depending of your budget our reccomendation is something like an used OM-System OM-5 Mark I (or its slightly older cousin the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark IV

They are compact, and more specifically, because the sensor is 4/3 of an inch, it happens to need exactly half the length as full frame to achieve the same FOV/Zoom level. They are ideal as an on-and-about camera with close to 40 years worth of lenses available to you if you are thrifty.

Please remind us to upload some sample photos so you can see if it is something you vibe with.

@ZanaGB thanks ​​
Here's your reminder to upload some pics :3

@miles Our photographs are mostly all about airplanes or close-ups or critters and things hahaha. But it may give you an idea.

We like shooting in-camera so you can see pretty much all the issues we have with each shot in the 3 posts we made hahah. But. Yeah. You really can't go wrong with anything made in the last 10 years.

@miles Some extra variety shots where we focus more on the texture of things.

@miles

It isn't about the equipment, in general. You can do 99% of everything with a decent one-piece/all-in-one camera, if that's what you have available or in your budget. You can learn everything and practice everything without needing to drop big money.

Once you do start pushing the limits of whatever your first setup is, you'll probably want to get an interchangeable-lens camera. At that point, ignore the camera itself and look at lenses - pick a system based on what lenses you'll actually use, what capabilities they have, whether they're too big or too heavy for where you want to haul them to use, all that sort of thing.

If you stay in photography, and you actually need an interchangeable-lens camera, you will spend far more on the glass than on the camera, and the technical quality of your images are going to be limited more by the glass than the camera too. Once you've decided on what glass you want to use, you buy whatever camera you like to let you use that glass.

@cazabon @miles

While we'd probably jump straight to a higher-quality used body and just save yourself the trouble (god knows out first "real" camera was a lemon that almost made us quit the hobby) Cazabon has a point.

If you want to go the integrated camera route for a starter camera, you should be able to find Ricoh GRII's, Panasonic DMC-LX10's, and the Canon Powershot G7 X II and III for cheap. (or if you want something compact like the Pana, the Canon SX740-H, but despite it being a great camera on paper it's bloody awful), these models are all from 2016-2019 and should be relatively cheap these days. Some of them are fixed-lens devices, others have your "standard" zoom range (24-75mm-ish) and they all have different performance in different conditions.

Overall, it really depends on what you want to shoot with 'em

(you can tell we have a bias towards small bodies with smaller sensors but we have a bias towards all things small and those cameras tend to be just good for most things while not excelling in any area, which is good enough for us. but yeah.)

Ultimately, read, experiment, and if you can take advantage of return windows, do so. Cameras are nearly as unique as the people wielding them