Camera suggestion for portraits

[bharathitman]

Hey everyone,
My S.O is showing high interest in purchasing a dedicated camera to take pictures (specifically her portraits - mid distance portraits) during our vacations. Both of us have decent phones (pixel and a galaxy) and she isn't satisfied with the results and wants something better. We were looking at cameras between 50k - 1L. I would really prefer these

• A compact mirrorless camera body
• Needs to good take good portraits out of the box with good a bokeh. Although I will take my time to learn the camera, a huge bonus would be to get most of the pictures right with minimal effort.
• Would also appreciate if it comes with a single do it all lens for most situations (something akin to a 18-135mm?)

Thank you very much in advance

[Bharat Varma]

What's S.O?

1. Compact mirrorless body - can't do much better than the Olympus EM5 mk II in terms of all around balance and capability.

2. Very good jpg engine plus built in stabilization ought to serve you well here.

3. No single do it all lens is going to match a prime for portraits, with the possible exception of 70-200 F/2.8 equivalent lenses. But you don't get zooms like this for M4/3. If your focus is solely going to be portraits, the best M4/3 lens is probably the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 75mm f/1.8 ED, followed by the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm F/1.8 (best value for money Oly lens).

4. Alternatively, get the kit Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 EZ Lens. Great do it all lens, shoots excellent macro as well. Will not give you portraits as good as the two primes above, but maybe you'll find what it does give good enough. It's a worthwhile lens to have anyway. Excellent value for money.

[Nishit Dave]

I would suggest a Sony a6100 and a 35mm f/1.8 OSS or a 50mm f/1.8 OSS. Takes care of the bokeh part and works for various other kinds of shots. The kit lens works for general purpose photography.

Sharpness and contrast for JPEGs can be set to desired levels in picture profiles. The downside of JPEG-only photography is that the white balance can be thrown off in shade, which makes blues and purples come out wrong. Just changing the WB setting can address this if one does not want to mess around with RAW images. One could always shoot in Raw+JPEG mode.

[neo2510]

an Olympus OMD EM-10 Mark II or Mark III or an OMD EM-5 Mark II with an Olympus 75mm f1.8 will give you portraits (with bokeh) pretty much on the same level as a full frame system with a 135mm portrait lens.

the results you'd get with this setup would be unmatched for this size/weight and price.

for general stuff... an Olympus 12-40mm PRO f2.8 (one of the sharpest lenses of any system) will serve you very well as a general purpose lens (equivalent to a full frame 24-70 ish lens).

this setup if bought used... would be well within 1 lakh, is super-light for the image quality it will give you, and will fit in a tiny camera bag... all while giving you tack sharp images with out of this world bokeh for your portraits.

[bharathitman]

Thank you very much for the help everyone. After much deliberation and asking around we settled on a Fujifilm X-S20 with a XC 15-45mm kit lens and a viltrox 56MM prime

[Nishit Dave]

Good choice.