The moon is a tricky subject to photograph. When you step outside on the night of a full moon, it looks huge, dominating the sky. But then you take a quick photo and…it’s a small indistinct white blob.
There are a few things you need to do to take photos of the moon, so let’s break it down.
What Makes a Good Moon Photo
Before taking a photo of the moon, you need to know two things: the moon is very very bright, and it’s very very far away. These might sound obvious, but they’re at the heart of what makes taking a photo of the moon so awkward.
Because the moon is so bright, and the only objects we have to compare it to are the pinpricks of stars and planets, we remember it as appearing much bigger than it is. In reality, it’s actually quite small in the night sky. This means you can’t get a good close up shot without a telephoto lens.
Second, the moon is much brighter than anything else at night—besides artificial lights. While our eyes have the dynamic range to see both the moon and the surroundings, your camera probably doesn’t. This means that you either have to expose for the moon and have it sit in an empty black photo or expose for the surroundings and get an overexposed white blob.
A good moon photo then, solves these problems. Either it’s a close-up of the moon shot with a telephoto lens so that you can see small details, or it finds some way to balance the exposure of the moon so that you can see other details in the image.
The Technical Stuff
When you’re shooting a photo of the moon, you will get the best results if you…
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