Male Mandarin ducks - Is there a better looking duck!?
- Thread starter Naboo32
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nice shots..mark
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Nice set,pity you cropped off the reflection in no3,
john.
john.
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- shane
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Very colourfull and nice shots.
OP
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Everything that I write in response to these specific posts is going to sound like 'an excuse' 
- I apologise for that in advance ...
Chris, I couldn't respond (properly) to your PM until I'd double-checked my calendar, sorry. As you now know, I have replied.
And yes, these Mandarin ducks are the offspring (I assume) of some 'escapee ducks' (which I photographed two years ago with bands on their legs), who now populate the Eilenriede forest in the centre of the city. If you want to try and get some pics of them when you come over next week, it'll be as easy as shooting ducks in a barrel (without the barrel). Just say the word and I'll take you to them.
Well spotted that man! They were indeed under-exposed (deliberately) by about 1.3 stops (IIRC). The thing is, I was using an FX 300mm prime (on a DX sensor body), in an area that was shaded by trees and at about 8pm. Even with the ISO 640 (or whatever it was that I used), I could get shutter speeds good enough to hand hold, so the image quality was always going to suffer one way or another :|.
I think that these all have s/s's less than 1/200th sec, but all were hand held :shrug:. I pushed the exposure values in PPing, but if I took it much further, you'd really see the IQ fall apart.
Thanks for taking the time to give such detailed feedback though - I really appreciate it!
Actually John, it's worse than that
. I just framed the shot badly and all of the cropping was done from the top (and RHS) of the frame.
I really don't expect to be winning any awards for these photos.
Well yeah, that's what I thought. They are beautiful birds (one of my favourite species, actually) and most of the other pictures that I have of them suffer from blown highlights, where the white feathers just reflect every drop of sunlight and over-shadow every other element of light. I'm starting to believe that these birds are best photographed in overcast lighting conditions :shrug:.
Anyway, thanks to all of those who posted their views. I know that these photos are not all that outstanding, but I did like the fact that the subdued lighting allows you to see the detail a lot better than would some of the more 'aesthetic' lighting options.
Oh, by the way, here's Hannover's famous 'Woody', for those who requested him. I haven't seen him this spring, mind 
...
- I apologise for that in advance ...Nice ones (even though you didn't reply to my PM
Chris, I couldn't respond (properly) to your PM until I'd double-checked my calendar, sorry. As you now know, I have replied
.And yes, these Mandarin ducks are the offspring (I assume) of some 'escapee ducks' (which I photographed two years ago with bands on their legs), who now populate the Eilenriede forest in the centre of the city. If you want to try and get some pics of them when you come over next week, it'll be as easy as shooting ducks in a barrel (without the barrel
). Just say the word and I'll take you to them.Well spotted that man! They were indeed under-exposed (deliberately) by about 1.3 stops (IIRC). The thing is, I was using an FX 300mm prime (on a DX sensor body), in an area that was shaded by trees and at about 8pm. Even with the ISO 640 (or whatever it was that I used), I could get shutter speeds good enough to hand hold, so the image quality was always going to suffer one way or another :|.
I think that these all have s/s's less than 1/200th sec, but all were hand held :shrug:. I pushed the exposure values in PPing, but if I took it much further, you'd really see the IQ fall apart.
Thanks for taking the time to give such detailed feedback though - I really appreciate it
!Actually John, it's worse than that
. I just framed the shot badly and all of the cropping was done from the top (and RHS) of the frame.I really don't expect to be winning any awards for these photos
.Well yeah, that's what I thought. They are beautiful birds (one of my favourite species, actually) and most of the other pictures that I have of them suffer from blown highlights, where the white feathers just reflect every drop of sunlight and over-shadow every other element of light. I'm starting to believe that these birds are best photographed in overcast lighting conditions :shrug:.
Anyway, thanks to all of those who posted their views. I know that these photos are not all that outstanding, but I did like the fact that the subdued lighting allows you to see the detail a lot better than would some of the more 'aesthetic' lighting options.
Oh, by the way, here's Hannover's famous 'Woody', for those who requested him
. I haven't seen him this spring, mind ...