Nice set. I rather like slither, and love skippy in prayer Very cool.

Regards

Wow - great shots and an impressive set-up! fantastic results. Thanks for the link. I don't read the Mail much either but on the strength of this I am prepared to look at the pictures

Regards

Thanks all. I have seen a few skirmishes between ducks (and geese) but this was the most prolonged and violent I have seen until now, especially without a female duck being directly involved (I have seen a pack of male Mallards go pretty much insane piling onto a female). There was no blood, I think the loser mostly suffered from a bruised ego and the odd lost feather.

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I think number 3 is excellent. I assume it's ripples on the water surface causing the bands of light on the rocks? either way it looks great to me

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Some beautiful shots there Bob from what looks like a lovely day. I really like number 2 - that's a great angle! I like the way you have picked out a single stalk and then used a narrow DOF. Top notch!

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I agree - a great set. I rather like number 6 with the hanging chandelier especially, and the DOF effect on several of the others is very accomplished. Looking forward to seeing more from your return visit(s)

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another Wow from me! great set. Jealousy rising...

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Hello all. With the arrival of spring and the breeding season for a lot of birds there have been some great behaviours on show as (generally) the males of the species get a bit feisty with one another (and with the females) in a pheremone-fuelled frenzy. I posted a thread of some Moorhens tussling a little while back, This time it is the turn of a couple of Mallards. These guys are pretty violent with one another and especially with the female ducks, and I watched a couple of males having a solid fight at the Wetland Centre in Barnes last week. Here is a flavour:
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I fired off a load of shots of these ducks fighting and there are more on flickr if anyone wants to see more. The Wetland Centre is a great place. They have a lot of wild space with hides and viewing areas, as well as a small collection of 'captive' ducks (mainly for conservation I think) and this series was taken in one of those enclosures; but the Mallards are wild - they obviously realise that the enclosures are an easy place to get fed I guess.

Hope you like them. Any C&C welcome as ever. These were all taken with the K-7 fitted with Sigma 100-300 f4.

Regards

Nice shots of an extraordinary subject. I like the second especially. How close did you get - he looks like he could be a pretty scary chap! (like a proper dinosaur...)

Regards

I agree with Hefty. I have done a lot of panoramas this year and unless you lock the exposure, then the camera changes the exposure from shot to shot making it more difficult to knit the pics together. I find PSE9 does it not-too-badly, and if you shoot RAW you can adjust the component pictures fairly easily after shooting but doing it in-camera is easiest I think.

The only thing I would add is that if you don't want to go into Manual mode, you can simply line up an exposure midway through the tunnel, then lock that exposure information in simply by pressing the 'AE-L' button on the top right of the rear of the K-7 body. When the exposure is locked there will be an asterisk in the info bar at the bottom of the viewfinder and as long as that is there the exposures should all be the same. Definitely worth having a play...