Bridge Camera Under £500

[Jackwow]

My friend gets a lot of birds in her garden and wants to photograph them but only has the camera on her phone and has asked me for camera recommendations. Her budget is max £500 so I assume her only viable option is a bridge camera? I hear Panasonic Lumix have a good reputation and as a Canon DSLR user I'm sure Canon must also have some good options. So what would folk more knowledgeable than me recommend?

 

[Snapsh0t]

You have to understand that the compact camera market is effectively dead, killed by smartphones. None of the manufacturers has released a new bridge camera since 2019. Sony still sells one very expensive bridge camera; Panasonic has three, somewhat cheaper, and Nikon has two. All of them will probably disappear at the end of this year when EU legislation comes in, requiring USB-C charging sockets.

One of the Panasonics is probably the only option if buying new - the FZ330 has a lens that's 600 mm FF-equivalent and is comfortably under budget.
After that a used Panasonic FZ1000 would be a good option - lens only goes to 400mm equivalent but it has a much larger sensor then the FZ330.
If you're very lucky you might find a used FZ2000 within budget - almost identical to the FZ1000 but lens goes to 480mm.

I haven't recommended one of the Nikons s/h as their lenses are too long for a beginner and the results are likely to be disappointing.

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

I use a Panasonic FZ82.

The lens covers very wide angle (equivalent to 20mm on full frame) to extreme telephoto (equivalent to 1200mm). They can be found for £200 or so in the uk.

 

[Icee]

I would recommend the Panasonic FZ1000 if a good one can be had for the price.

 

[stickytape]

fz2500/ fz2000 is great!

 

[Sangoma]

My friend gets a lot of birds in her garden and wants to photograph them but only has the camera on her phone and has asked me for camera recommendations. Her budget is max £500 so I assume her only viable option is a bridge camera? I hear Panasonic Lumix have a good reputation and as a Canon DSLR user I'm sure Canon must also have some good options. So what would folk more knowledgeable than me recommend?

Taking you question literally a Panasonic Lumix 100-300 lens and a G5 or even a G80 (even a G3 at under £50) would be doable on budget with a little patience.
With an effective 600mm length will give better results than a small sensor bridge for the average bird shot

But of course if she wanted to do other than take pictures of the birds, it would not be as flexible without at least one other lens.