Mandarins in our local park

i love these ducks - they look so dapper, with a very sharp "haircut" - and by their demeanour, obviously consider themselves rather special!

Still enjoying my new camera, though I'm ditching many more pics than I'm saving!

  • I actually added 2 photos - one of a male, the other of a pair - one beneath the other within the editing box. But when I view them, the 2nd photo doesn't appear. Very strange!!
  • The Mandarins are very exotic ducks.
    The main thing is you are enjoying being out with the camera, not how many shots you throw away! At least with digital you can go to town experimenting with the settings and it doesn't cost anything (except time).
  • Glad to see you are enjoying your new camera and getting such nice photos; the mandarin ducks are really beautiful. I think a lot of us who take photos throw far more away than we keep - so join the club ! main thing, as Nigel says is just enjoying the outdoors and learning what your new camera can do by playing around with settings. Even when taking a bad shot you can often learn from what went wrong and then adjust settings again to see if the next shot is improved. Looks to me as if you are doing really well considering the camera is new to you so keep calm and carry on clicking !!

  • Awesome pics, Karen! I love Mandarins. Whereabouts in Suffolk did you spot them?
  • Unknown said:
    Still enjoying my new camera, though I'm ditching many more pics than I'm saving!

    That's the beauty of digital photography, it's not costing you any more to take lots of photos even if they are not all keepers..

    Very nice shots of the Mandarins. They are certainly very striking looking ducks, 

  • Yes, they are indeed, Nigel. Thanks very much for the encouragement. There are such fabulous photographs on this site, I hesitate to upload my own!
  • Thanks, Jack. I saw them on the Wilderness Pond in Christchurch Park, very close to Ipswich town centre. I've also spotted Oystercatchers near the railway station, on the Orwell... we are lucky to have such a variety of wildlife in a relatively busy town.
  • Thanks, Hazel - you are very kind. I am learning a little each time I go out with my lovely camera. I did go on a 10 week evening course, but the tutor didn't know anything about Panasonics, so I got a bit lost trying to find the functions he was describing... and there was a lot of technical information (numerical values for the F stops and shutter speeds plus ISOs), only some of which sunk in. I tried a few Youtube videos, but they seemed to just skip through the menus, reading out the names of the functions without actually explaining what effects they would have on the finished photo. I keep on reading bits of the manual, which helps (a bit).