Thomas Varghese

Wow, amazing pics @samamara. You are talented photographer. The tools are good too.

Congrats Angela @Foxtrot Oscar. Looking forward to tomorrow's drive with you. Yalla yalla.

Please post the pictures. Baofangs have this problem I suppose. Its Chinese and cheap. The earphones should work and if it does, its sure the speaker problem. If you have the invoice you maybe able to replace them from the shop you bought them. Always better to carry 2 radios with you during the drives.

@samamara I think you may have dropped the radio somewhere. The speaker inside that radio is very cheap. Unfortunately the repair costs more than the radio - almost double. Better buy another one and salvage the battery from this. I use the radio whose speaker is not working with headphone while I drive as its more clear than the built in speaker Hope you took @Niki's offer and participated in the drive.

I'm not sure but looks like the speaker in your radio has died. I have the same problem in one of my Boafeng radio and it will only produce sound when connected to its earphone.

1 more friend to play with in the sands

Graduate to more serious tools like a DSLR or mirrorless system. It may seem cumbersome in the beginning and confusing but once you start using it then you will never use your phone to take pictures. There are so many tutorials to brief you on photography but I found this channel richard bradbury 500d - YouTube most simple and very informative. Its a tutorial about Canon 500D but the principle applies to any camera regardless of the make you prefer. I think there are almost 27 video tutorials and once you finish watching them you will look at your camera seriously. Regarding post production as I use RAW format always I use Adobe Lightroom and use tutorials from Antony Morganti anthony morganti - YouTube. I wish I can learn Adobe Photoshop and use its photo processing software but its better to study Photoshop in an institute as its a very sophisticated software which takes proper attention. I find Photoshop as the ultimate post production photography software and once you master it then the possibilities of editing your pictures are infinite. Lightroom is a good software but not as precise and powerful as Photoshop but relatively very easy to learn and will cater to a beginner in Photography. The cameras now a days are so powerful it doesn't really matter whether its manufactured by X, Y, Z company and the models. Eg. Canon 600D. The 650D, 700D, 750D, 800D are only software updates to the real 600D without much changes in the real capabilities of the hardware of the camera except increasing the megapixels, frame rates, and processor models which actually doesn't make much difference. Always remember Camera is only a tool. Its you who uses the tool to take picture and the upgrade has to start with understanding the capabilities of the tool from you yourself. A better model camera doesn't give you better pictures than an older model if you don't know how to take a picture. Don't worry about picture composition much in the beginning. It will come to you naturally once you start clicking pictures.

The pictures you post doesn't look like Absolute Newbie