Getting bored now

Lovely sunshine all round today Gaynor...Oh those Starlings certainly know how to have a pool party lol. Lovely little Egrets aswell...I actually saw a few crocus sprout today in my wild patch. Keep your chin up and keep snapping away ;-)

Thanks for sharing Gaynor :o)
A lovely looking drop of blue sky.
It might be that "sport" increases the shutter speed, so less light gets in so pics are darker. The faster shutter speed should capture faster moving stuff in focus, eg the drops of water from the starling shower, or birds wings when they are flying. Maybe. Or that could all be rubbish :o)

Brilliant photos Gaynor, and as for the rule of taking photos facing the sun, well, all rules have to be broken at some time or other, or you just wouldn't have got the photo you did.

The reason why your photo taken in sport mode came out dark is because sport mode utilises a faster shutter speed to capture the action clearly, which in turn means a shorter duration for light entering the camera sensors.

Sometimes cameras struggle with brilliant light, particularly with scenes where glare can be apparent, like sun reflecting from water, or snow, and because sport selects a faster shutter speed, everything else will see the scene as bright, so insufficient light is allowed and the overall picture turns out dark.

Many cameras today have a snow (and or water/sea) scene setting, and that may help to capture the subject a little more clearly.

Try a few, and to ensure you get one photo, use the camera in normal mode as well, and observe the differences.

Yes, understood!!!! thank you PB I am sure you are right, you and Mike have said same thing so basically I need to practice and even understand what I am doing, but evidently taking the more or less stationary L Egrets, was not ever going to work out, don't know why I used "sport" but it seemed a good idea at the time.

I wouldn't say they didn't work out, Gaynor, I prefer the darker shots of the egrets, but that could just be me....the dark side of stuff lol