Afternoon all. I had the day off today but had to tidy the garden... thought I would distract myself a bit and take a few shots. These were all taken with the DA 35 Macro ltd - and it has been said before but this is a gem of a lens (IMO).

First up, a tiny purple flower; not sure what it is:



Then a couple from the lid of the compost bin(!)... big snail little snail - like a truck towing a caravan...



...and a tiny spider in his tiny lair...



Finally, two more shots of the purple flower - the first one is 'normal', although with a big aperture, and in the second I (unintentionally) blew the whole image away with flash. Having said that, I don't really mind it - would be interested to know what anyone else thinks...??






I hope you like them... any C&C welcomed as usual

Regards

What a great set - and a great idea - well executed too Did you take the same flower over a number of days or were you able to find flowers in a range of states to put the story together? Either way I agree with the comments above that it deserves some wall space in some form.

Regards

Mat W

Thanks everyone, comments much appreciated. I like the Bluebells shot too - i was lucky that it was a sunny morning yesterday to back-light them. I never get bored of the ducks, and I agree that the Mandarin shot from above has much better colours/contrast than the one from the side - I just couldn't resist all those coloured reflections. I was back there again this morning... Now my only headache is processing about 6 Gigs of raw files...

Regards

Mat W

PS - thanks for the comments about the ducks

Mat

Roger - you are exactly right. I love the Plantation and normally find myself in there one way or another every weekend... Just now it is an absolute riot of colour! Mind you, Wiltshire's nice too

Regards

Mat W

Good shot and a very photogenic subject! I would love to go and see Puffins in the flesh...

Nice one

Mat

Hello all, I have got into the habit of trying to post some pics on the forum every weekend and here is today's handful. I recently picked up a new Sigma 100-300mm f4 lens and this was my first chance to give it a run out. I popped out to my favourite part of Richmond Park to see the ducks - so apologies if you don't like ducks!

Overall impressions of the Sigma are very positive. Seems sharp, focusses quickly and feels good to use (to my mind); and seems an all-round step up in quality from the 70-300 APO.

Anyway - here we are. It was a very nice morning although also very early so the sun was low...

First up, Bluebells - these are everywhere now:



Next, a pair of Mandarins pretending to have a lie-in...






Finally - a couple of groovy reflections... The park is almost in full bloom (beautiful to see) so some of the reflections are fantastically coloured from the banks of flowers:



and these are just plain freaky (the duck is a Pintail):



I hope you like these. I took loads of pics this morning but not yet processed most of them. As ever, any C&C appreciated.

Best Regards

Mat W

I have to agree with all the above - really a great pic

Mat W

Excellent judging and great pics! Another really good comp. Congrats to all!

Regards

Mat W

Hi Steve welcome to the forum. Good choice I believe in plumping for a K-x. I use a K-7 but I haven't heard a bad thing about the K-x - I believe it is officially award winning too The lenses you choose to get with your K-x will depend on what you want to take pictures of and what your budget is I guess. My suggestion would be that if you want to get a decent frame filling shot of a Robin (even if he's not too scaredy), you will probably need a lens which goes out to ~300mm or so - if you search the gallery on this site for robins and then look at the exif data for the shots you will get a feel for the lenses people are using to snap them. For pictures of the kids the 'kit' lens of 18-50mm ought to suit (unless they are a long way away ). It might be worth popping into a camera shop and trying some of the kit out to get a feel for what you can achieve with the different lenses...

Just couple of thoughts - Hope that helps

Regards

Mat W