MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
got about 500 nicker to spend on a decent camera for bike packing micro 4 thirds
I've got a Panasonic GX80 which I highly recommend - it gets great reviews. I'm considering getting rid of all my SLR gear it's that good.
Nice features for travel/bikepacking - it has a USB port to charge the battery in-camera. Mighty useful - so e.g. you can use a solar power pack, or a USB portable battery. The body is well made and feels solid - feels like it could take some stick, especially next to Sony A6000 which feels fragile by comparison.
In body stabilisation works really well - so you get the benefit with any lens.
The kit lens 12-32 is actually pretty darn good for a kit lens and is very small and compact. I tend to use mine with the very excellent and compact 20mm f1.7 lens. Nice thing with m43 is the lenses are relatively small and good value, and filters are cheap if you want to get creative!
Body and lens are compact and fit in a relatively small pouch bag. I use one of these:-
On that budget I'd be say look at 1 inch sensor compact. Rx100 from Sony, Canon, Pentax and Panasonic have options within your budget
The problem being £500 doesn't have enough cash for lenses to make it worth while.
The kit lens is too slow to be better than the f1.8 many of these cameras have at the wide end.
Or I'd want a wider range kit lens say the 12-60
If you are going up for more lenses later the that is different.