Millbrook is in the Delaware Water Gap national park and full of great shots. In the summer months, several of the buildings are open with volunteers in costumes on several occasions. A great place to get "lost in time" for an hour or two taking pictures. As an aside, one of the entry roads to Millbrook (Old Mine Road) will be closing down for much of the spring and summer soon for repairs. OMR is supposedly the oldest commercial road in the U.S. and was used by the colonial Dutch to cart ore from some of the mines up to Poughkeepsie.

Folks - I raised this subject a few years back and thought I’d give it an encore. UHH has 2 sections for members to post pics - Photo Gallery and Photo Analysis and posting constructive criticism in the first is frowned upon. I think this rule does a disservice to photographers looking to up their game.

I often look at posts in the Gallery and too often see, sorry for the blunt language, just awful photos. I’m not talking about subjective matters. I’m talking about pics that are out of focus, poorly exposed, with wildly tilted horizons (not done intentionally for artistic purposes), badly post processed or overprocessed, poorly composed with telephone poles growing out of heads, etc. or any number of other technical (NOT subjective) flaws.

And most times, well meaning members post, “Great set”, or “Nicely done” or other “ attaboys” in an attempt to not hurt another member’s feelings. I see this as counterproductive and reinforcing bad technique by poster. I ask how is a member to develop better photography skills if, I again apologize upfront, technically terrible pics are displayed and followed by lots of gushing platitudes?

Last time I mentioned this, I was slapped down by numerous members who argue that unless a poster requests constructive criticism, nothing negative should be said. Ok - I’ll buy the “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing” idea, but gushing over bad stuff does harm to the poster too. If the pics are bad, say nothing. Stop reinforcing bad work.

Just a suggestion to those posting to the Gallery in the future - think about soliciting criticisms so you can improve your work. Sure you will get many nasty, snarky and often incorrect replies from a certain subsection of members, but you will also get many great suggestions for improvement offered in a polite, constructive manner. I’ve been a photographer for 55 yrs and I welcome all well meaning and civil critiques. We are never too old to learn a new trick.

Anxious to see the replies to this rant.

I am wondering if anyone can explain what happened with my photos of the 2024 eclipse. Here's the setup.

I was near the center of the path of totality. There were a few high, very thin clouds, but the view was pretty much clear and unobstructed for the entire time.

These pictures were taken with a Nikon D5500 with Nikon 18-55mm zoon, set to 55mm.
Focus set to infinity.
Solar filter was installed.
Exposure was manual (I think F8, 1/30 sec, ISO 800).
Pix taken every 1 minute via remote shutter release.

I also had a Nikon D5100 with a Sigma 600mm reflector lens. Same exposure settings. Solar filter installed. Pix taken every 1 minute using an intervalometer.

The D5100/600mm took decent (although overexposed!) photos. You can plainly see the eclipse progression from beginning to end of the partial.

The D5500 only took pictures of a round image - no eclipse change noted, other than position. Just a round dot.
I know that the setup should have worked because I could see a difference when I moved my hand in front of the lens (using LiveView).

I've also checked the D5500 since then to see if there was any kind of damage to the sensor - everything looks fine.

I would like to understand what happened to cause every image to be the same dot.