Camera Suggestions?

going to second the above, the reality of the situation is that most digital cameras from the last 5 or so years are better than the vast majority of digital cameras available to most folks ten years ago, and we all made do with those back then.

you don’t need crazy high pixel counts (most folks look at photos on phones, and they’re all downsized anyway.) you don’t need crazy low-light performance. you don’t need wild lenses or anything.

basically every camera made by sony/canon/nikon/fuji in the past ten years is pretty incredible relatively. what you need is:

1. a camera with a decent number of MPs, just so that your images look Good Enough on modern high rez monitors. 6-12mp is roughly what you need for the average social media post. if you ever want to do blown up prints, 24mp might be a slightly safer investment. no need to go for more than that.
2. find a decent lens that can focus at the range you need. if you need to take photos of very small paintings, make sure the minimum focal distance is such that you can pull in as close as you need to make it fill most of the frame.
3. figure out your lighting situation. you can use constant lights (just normal lights, or video lights, which these days are generally large LED panels) or strobes/speedlites (colloquially flash) but i would not recommend using flash built into your camera. it's best if your lights are "off-camera." taking the photo outside in bright sunlight could also be an option, if it's too bright and contrasty you can buy a diffuser (or just hang a sheer-ish white sheet between the sun and the painting.) to take an ideal photo of a painting you will need lots of light, more than you'd think.
4. learn how to use the most critical features of your camera for this specific task. this really means figuring out how to manually white balance on it, how to set the ISO, aperture and shutter speed, and how to set the focus point properly.

your big enemy here is lack of light. all the core settings on your camera have a tradeoff, and selecting the optimal ones for an evenly-sharp, noise-free, unblurry image will mean that you need tons and tons of light to expose properly.

set the camera to its base ISO (if it has to amplify the image, you will get noise and lose sharpness.) the base ISO is the default sensitivity of your camera's sensor, which means there's less processing done to what comes out of it in order to make the image brighter. this will be in the camera's manual, or you can look it up online. the most common value is ISO 100. the lower the ISO, the dimmer the image gets.

shooting at a narrower aperture (higher f-stop number) means that more of the image will be in focus at once, and particularly on cheaper lenses, there’s generally a sweet spot where the lens is “optimally sharp,” which means that it’s roughly as sharp on the edges as it is in the middle. if you are looking into a specific camera, most reviews will call this out on photography sites.

shooting at a higher shutter speed will ensure that if the camera does happen to move, the shutter is open less time, so you get no motion blur. use a tripod, too, and use the timer feature to reduce the likelihood that you pressing the button jiggles the camera while it’s capturing.

after you set all these settings, the image will likely look very dim. BLAST it with light until your camera’s exposure meter says it’s properly exposed.

before you take the photo, white balance. lots of cameras by default are set on “auto white balance” (like phone cameras) where it tries to figure out what is white in the image, and calibrate the concept of white to that specific color. on images that aren’t natural colors or don’t have lots of white or where it can’t figure out what white is, you’re going to wind up with an image that is shifted in terms of orange/blue or pink/green. if your camera offers manual white balancing, it often will let you take a photo of a white object and then balance to that. i use a bright white piece of cardboard i bought on amazon for $2 when color is critical, and that gets me 90% of the way there. you can tweak it just a little after the fact in a photo editing program to get it where you like it.

i’m saying all this because your use case is the easiest one to get right so which camera you buy doesn’t matter - it’s just a matter of some trial and error.: you control the subject, the lighting, the location of the camera, and can try as many times as you want. rather than worry about camera specs, get a good enough camera and absolutely light the hell out of your subject until you’re in your camera’s sweet spot, then take every photo like that.

if you want a camera with changeable lenses, my honest recommendation is something mirrorless from Fuji in your price range. buy used if you have to. the kit zoom (the cheapest mid-range zoom lens they make, the 16-50 f/2.8-4) is legendary for how good it is and you will not be disappointed by the output. the reason i recommend Fuji over sony/canon/nikon is fuji’s JPEG images right of camera are worlds better than any of the other manufacturers, which definitely do great work, but often really benefit from post processing and massaging (which most folks who do Photography love to do) in order to really pop. Fuji cameras generally just pop straight out of camera with most pictures you take, which I assume is something you’d really appreciate in your camera - it doesn’t sound like you’re in it to get deep into photography.

If you don’t care about swapping lenses, I really like the Sony RX100. There are like fifteen versions of it. Just pick the one you can afford from a store with a generous return policy and try it out. The image output is pretty phenomenal for a handheld and even the way cheaper, old ones are still fabulous cameras.

These are just cameras I can personally vouch for, but there are lots of good cameras.

After that, buy lights. For real. There are pretty cheap LED video lights (or constant lights) that you can buy and just get cheap light stands for them. Absolutely light the hell out of your photo. White balance the camera, take the picture. Adjust the settings until you think it’s bright enough. I don’t think it would be worth it for you to invest in off-camera flash and a remote trigger, so realistically constant lights will be your cheapest, best way in.

Once you get the rhythm down, they’ll come out flawless.

If I were you I’d go so far as to learn how to manually white balance on your phone camera, buy the lights first, absolutely blast your painting with light until you get even lighting and no hot spots (might take some experimenting to get enough light on the image while not having reflections of the light elements, try them at 45 degree angles to the side and maybe from above, angled down?) Most cameras (even phone cameras) can take great photos with great light, so my first suggestion is always flood the subject with light.

After that, if you still don’t like the images, then go shopping. Pick a bunch of cameras from sony/fuji/canon/nikon in your price range, new or used, and a lens if you need one for the camera you chose. Read the reviews for them and learn about them. Buy the cheapest one whose sample photos you like that’s in the price range you’re willing to spend. You will get benefits the more you spend, and newer sensors are better, plus new cameras are generally faster and have cool features like wi-fi photo transfer, so don’t entirely cheap out - that said, I’m willing to bet $2-300 bucks is enough to get something MORE than good enough to do what you’re doing if you’re okay with used gear. If you want to invest a little more, you'll be able to get something with more modern features and a better, more modern sensor (they've advanced a lot in the last few years.)

Photos are like 99% light and 1% camera and lens, so whenever you are trying to take one and it’s not coming out the way you want, the first move is to just light it more with your existing camera until you’re confident it won’t do what you want.

one small edit: if you want to shoot videos of your painting, your biggest limiter will be heat and recording time. many digital cameras can’t just endlessly record video without overheating, particularly early mirrorless. many have hard limits on how much video they’ll record in one go (the urban legend i hear is that there is a tax difference between video and still cameras, take it with a grain of salt.) so realistically just use this as a metric to narrow down your options and be sure to check and not assume they can go for the time you want. many cameras have automatic time lapse modes which can run much longer, as well, which may be your cup of tea.