I've been consistently amazed by the capabilities of my Galaxy Note 8. Even by today's standards, it's well out dated, but it produces great images. Path of the Vikings 2018 by Jono Kenyon, on Flickr
I have a whole bunch of cameras, but the one I use the most nowadays is my cellphone camera. It's the one I have with me all the time. However, if you find yourself getting into the hobby and want a lot of flexibility on what you can shoot, at a reasonable price, I would recommend a high zoom ratio (sometimes called superzoom) point n shoot camera like a Nikon Coolpix P950 or Lumix FZ300. Superzoom cameras are available in price from a few hundred dollars to the really good ones in the thousands. Then if you find you are really interested and want to get more serious and adventurous, upgrade to a dSLR and then medium format if you decide to turn professional. Most digital camera sensors are good for 50,000 shots. Most people will never get there, so if you spend too much upfront and not get too serious, then you are going overkill. The most flexible camera I used was a Canon SX-10. It was one of the early superzooms. I literally wore it out. It doesn't work anymore. For my more serious pictures, I am using a Nikon dSLR with a good Sigma lens. I also have a bunch of film cameras that I from time to time, pull out and use. The quality of the pictures are still noticeably better (for my eyes). For high quality pictures, I still use a medium format film twin lens reflex camera. I would have to spend a few hundred thousand dollars on a medium format digital camera and lens to match the quality of picture from my old 1957 vintage twin lens reflex camera. Remember the best pictures you take are the ones you take that you like. Not the camera you use. But the camera and lens you use can give you more flexibility on what you take and how you compose your image. Personally, I think the current cell phone cameras take great pictures, but they try to do too much for you and take away the flexibility for you to be artistic with your composition. To do that, you would have to edit the picture afterwards. Good luck with it. and for your amusement...
I have a problem and my wife is an enabler! I keep buying old cameras. My oldest one is an 1918 autograph. I enjoy collecting interesting ones. I still use my medium format film camera, its a Mamiya 654. I use my DLSR mostly. I took this with my Mama on a layover in Panama.
Honestly, photography lost a lot of the magic for me when the world went digital and we no longer needed a darkroom (I happened to lose my access to good darkrooms at almost the same moment in history). I worked in a biology research lab (well... several) and when you had to use film to capture your images, a skilled hand in the darkroom was hard to find. I spent way too many hours learning how to burn and dodge using light, time and lots of bits of cardboard on sticks to bring out the final image and I really miss that very physical part of the art form. When you can lighten, darken, dodge and blend with the wave of a mouse it seems a bit too easy. Yes... you get better results with a computer (much more control), but it makes me think of the Japanese principles of wabi sabi and the artistry in the natural imperfection of the work. I still have some photos that I shot on film, developed and laid to paper myself hanging on the walls around the house.
I used to love loading my own film. Shooting it, souping it myself & printing it. Over time my interests drifted elsewhere. My cameras & darkroom sat seldom if ever used. Life moved on & then digital photography came about. It really gained my attention. I was not an early adopter as the cameras then seemed like toys & the images they produced seemed half baked to me. What really flipped the switch for me was when Fujifilm came out with a camera called the S1 Pro in 2000. It was a Nikon SLR with Fuji guts stuffed inside. It allowed me to use all my Nikon lenses on this new wonder gadget. I have been through a series of Nikon DSLR cameras & now shoot with Fujifilm mirrorless ones. For me that is my happy place gear wise. While working in the darkroom was relaxing for me, doing post processing of digital files certainly was not. It took me a long time to figure out how to do it & I'm not an expert by any means. One benefit of digital is once the camera, computer & software are purchased there was no need to by film chemicals & paper. Beautiful prints can be made from digital files, although I rarely print these days. The best photographers not only shoot great compositions & capture light just right, they also are experts in the digital darkroom. The digital darkroom is not as easy as many people feel it is. Things have changed again. Cameras can take a photo, send it right to your phone so you can easily share it. I don't do social media, but it is great for sharing with family & friends. To me that is really something. Back on topic.... What digital camera? There are so many good cameras out there. Any one of them could work for you. You need to figure out if you want interchangeable lenses. What size sensor 1", M4/3, apsc, full frame or medium format. It really is hard to give you any meaningful advice. I'd recommend hitting some photography forums & asking questions there.
Once I no longer had access to a darkroom I stoped shooting for the most part. I remember when I got my first nice laptop to take with me on the road I started shooting agin. I would use film, have it developed and scanned then edit it. My first digital camera was trash. So I went back to film. Now I have a very good DLSR. It is nice to to be able to shoot then do my edits on the computer. I use a Wacom Cinitq so I can edit on the screen, their pen is great. It makes me feel more involved with my pictures. For a long time I didn't make prints very often. I was listing to another photographer talk about the importance of printing. The last step to bring your photo into the world. I decided to get a nice printer that is for photography. I found one on sale, almost half off. Now I do my own prints. It adds another facet to my photography. Getting your picture ready to print then deciding what kind of paper to use for that shot. Its nice to hold my pictures in my hand agin. I cant describe it. I encourage all photographers to do their own prints. But for us old farts that started with film it brings back some of what we lost. Even with all I just said I will never stop using film. Film forces you to be more thoughtful, to slow down. I know film can never match the dynamic range of my DLSR but there is something special about film. As I sit in my office typing this I am surrounded by my camera collection. Only two are digital My 5D and one of the first digital cameras an Apple QuickTake 200. The rest are film dating back to the very early 1900's. They are all in working order. It would be nice to see all the pictures taken with them through time. It reminded me of an article I once read titled the camera on your cell phone is better than what Ansel Adams had. It's not the camera it's the photographer behind it. Sorry to wax long about this but @Crashton and @agranger post struck a cord. P.S. For mothers day I bought my wife an old Canon AE-1 off eBay. It had 3 lenses with it. If you don't hear from me after Sunday you will know that the AE-1 not a hit.
Next time I'm out in the storage shed, I'll try to find my final project for a class that I took about a very special camera... an electron microscope! It would fire a very focused electron beam through super-fine tissue samples (chemically fixed, embedded in resin, cut on broken pieces of old shop-front window glass and suspended on a tiny mesh disk that fit into the microscope) which then exposed film in a deep chamber under the sample. You had to manually develop the film, expose to paper and then process the prints manually. People who did this for a living were steady, patient and very sought-after folks... it was an amazingly frustrating activity. I can remember cutting tissue samples for weeks but I kept getting these waves in my slices and they were horribly inconsistent. I went to one of the long-time techs who looked at 'em and asked "What time of day did you cut these?" I told her that it was from 3-5pm for several days in a row (a break in my class schedule every day). "Oh! That's when the delivery trucks for food service next door drop off produce and their engines idle while they drop off the food. You can't cut sections then!" I wound up coming back around midnight and immediately got excellent slices. The process was so sensitive to vibration that, in those midnight sessions, I could tell you when a car drove by outside by the way my samples cut. Here's an image of COVID 19 infected cells (the dark blobs are completed viral particles).
No MINI pictures.... But the camera was riding with me in the MINI during my last MINI trip.... So there was that.......
Been shooting quite a bit lately...here's a couple automotive shots. I've been liking the Cars at the Capital. 2 more weeks to go with a Duesenberg and a Lambo Countach coming up. The Black Ghost, a really cool story about this car, only one left with these options apparently. https://www.hagerty.com/drivers-club/my-garage/78598943/national-historic-vehicle-register/42bceeb2-f217-4264-9e9c-a6bbf909c3d3 Cars at the Capital WEEK 2 by Jono Kenyon, on Flickr And this one that everyone knows, I'd assume. Cars on the Capitol by Jono Kenyon, on Flickr