Just picked up a Sony A6000

BolleDuc wrote:

There seems nothing with your gear. And yes downsampling one photo but not the other is not an apples-to-apples comparison. I wouldn't worry so much about small differences in JPEG sharpness. If you are shooting a paid shoot use the best gear you have and use RAW and tweak it to your satisfaction. Else stop worrying so much that your kit lens might not be the best lens ever. Of course it's not; it's a compromise lens... that said it's capable of some really great photos anyway. https://www.flickr.com/groups/2122756@N21/pool/

And APS-C and MFT, even at relatively slow apertures, is capable of DOF effects if you are close enough to the subject. http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

I didn't downsample or change anything, they are both jpegs, straight from the camera. It's just that at 100% the APS-C sensor is 24MP, with slightly larger photosites, vs the 16MP of my E-PM2 & it is therefore "larger" on screen. So even though I'm not downsampling, is that a valid way to compare?

If you want to see the sharpness of final output then you have to have the images at the same size.  Viewing at 100%, the 24 MP picture will also be blown 50% larger than the 16 MP picture. To equalize this, you could view the 24 MP picture at 67% and the 16 MP at 100% and then see which is better: This will give you what you will see if you were to print both at the same size.

The links are very helpful, it certainly looks like the camera & lens is capable of some nice stuff & the DOF Master page explained just what I need to understand for that question. Thank you.

DoF is a result of a combination of sensor size, focal length and aperture (or if we don't adjust for equivalent framing, then simply a matter of focal length and aperture).  DPR just put out a nice article discussing the trade-offs here.