Recommend a good mirrorless camera for around $500.

The m50 is a fine suitable cheap camera, but what makes a picture look good or not has more to do with the sensor size and lens. That kit lens that comes with it will be crap in any environment that isn’t daylight bright w/ it’s f3.5 min aperture.

You’re gonna need a pretty wide lens to capture things in a plane cockpit as well.

If you can go up to the $900 range, there’s some better options that you’ll actually use.

Sony’s new ZV-1 mark 2 camera will be in stores within a few weeks and it would be a solid option. - Light, ultra portable, made for ease of use, and it comes with an 18-50 zoom lens built in, but. With an upgraded variable aperture down to f1.8.

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Usually I tell people around $1500-$2000+ is needed to get a quality camera body and some glass that’s on the upper end of good but lower end of great to beat what you can do on a new cell phone’s camera.

Usually the better the glass, the better “low light” capabilities you have. I shoot a lot of stuff inside, and even using f2.8 & f2 lenses, they just can’t touch what a really good lens that stops down to f1.4 can do.

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Lenses are only 1/2 the story. The other half is sensor size and pixel density. This results in more noise in cell phone images. Additionally, with cell phone sized sensors, you cannot truly take advantage of the the small apertures that cell phones have. They will still have significantly large depth of fields. It's simple physics. Plug the numbers into any hyperfocal distance calculator if you don't believe me.

Hyperfocal distance calculator.

In the $500-$600 range, the best bang for the buck is going to be a used sony mirrorless.

Yeah I paid $850 about 6 months ago for a Sony a6400 on sale with the 16-50 kit lens. Think it was normally $999.

And then I bought the Sony 30mm macro lens for a work use lens.

No complaints even took it hiking. Easy to lug around.