How to Photograph the Moon: Gear and Settings

Everyone has at least one in their phone gallery: trying to capture the moon that looked huge, and ending up with a plain white dot hanging in a pitch-black sky. The first lesson of moon photography hides in exactly that disappointment — and the lesson is surprising: the Moon is not a night subject. It’s a rock in space with the midday sun striking it; it’s shot with a daytime exposure in the middle of the night. Once you grasp this single idea, a moon detailed down to its craters becomes a matter of patience, not technique.

Exposure: the Looney 11 rule

The moon version of daytime landscape exposure’s historic “Sunny 16” rule is the Looney 11 rule:

With the aperture at f/11, the shutter ≈ 1 / ISO.

So at ISO 100, f/11 + 1/125; at ISO 200, f/11 + 1/250. These values are a starting point — you shift a stop or two for hazy air, closeness to the horizon and the phase, but they always take you to the right neighbourhood. Note that with these settings the sky comes out pitch-black; that’s fine, it is black. What you’re trying to save is the Moon’s surface.

The camera’s own meter fails systematically here: because 95% of the frame is black, the meter says “brighten” and blows out the Moon. Either take a spot reading directly off the Moon or start from Looney 11 in manual mode. Your check tool is less the histogram than 100% zoom on screen: if the craters read, the exposure is right. To refresh the logic of the triangle: the exposure triangle guide.

Why shutter still matters: the Moon is escaping

Why won’t a 1-second exposure work on a tripod? Two reasons: the Moon moves constantly across the sky (Earth’s rotation), and on a long-focal lens that movement turns to blur within seconds. The practical limit: 1/125 and up is safe in every case; on a tripod you can go down to 1/60. If you shoot handheld, the shake rule kicks in: a 400mm lens needs at least 1/400 handheld — a tripod makes life easier, but because the Looney 11 exposure is already short, the Moon is the only astrophotography subject shootable without a tripod.

Focal length: the Moon’s real size in the frame

Let’s start with the harsh truth: the Moon covers only half a degree in the sky. Those giant moon photos that fill the frame are always shot with long telephotos:

• 200mm (full frame): the Moon is a small detail in the frame; suitable for use with a landscape.
• 400-600mm: the “portrait” size where craters read. It starts filling a quarter of the frame.
• 800mm+ / telescope: a Moon that fills the frame.

The good news: the APS-C crop factor turns to an advantage here — a 400mm lens behaves like 600mm on an APS-C body. Moreover, modern sensors have plenty of crop margin: placing the Moon in the center of a 24MP frame and cropping to half still leaves a shareable resolution. So the “I don’t have a 600mm lens” excuse is partly invalid; 200–300mm + a crop does serious work. The general map of focal lengths is in this guide.

For focusing: AF can lock onto the Moon’s bright edge on most bodies; if it can’t lock, zoom to 100% in Live View and focus manually — it’s the easy version of the star-focusing technique, because the subject is huge and bright.

Choosing the phase: the full moon is actually the worst day

The counter-intuitive second lesson: for anyone wanting crater detail, the full moon is the least productive phase. At full moon the sun hits the Moon head-on — there are no shadows, and a shadowless surface looks flat and depthless (the space equivalent of shooting a landscape in midday sun). The real detail appears in the phases between crescent and gibbous, at the light-dark boundary (the terminator line): there the sun strikes the surface from the side and craters stand out like a relief with their long shadows.

The full moon has its own trump cards: the Moon looks giant on the horizon with the landscape as it rises/sets and passes through the orange atmospheric filter — the classic of moon-with-landscape compositions is the full moon’s rise time (it rises directly opposite as the sun sets; it coincides with blue hour, and exposure balance is easy while the sky is still bright). Apps like PhotoPills plan rise/set times and where the Moon will rise to metre precision.

The faint reading of the dark side on a thin crescent (earthshine) is a beauty of its own: it’s light reflected from Earth, and it appears with a few-seconds exposure — the bright side blows out, but blending two exposures is possible.

The Moon with a landscape: the compression game

The secret of photos that make the Moon look giant isn’t closeness, it’s distance: moving far from the subject and shooting with a very long lens. The Moon over a hill, shot from 2 km away with 600mm, compresses to the same frame ratio as the hill and becomes giant. The formula: a distant landmark (a tower, a mountain silhouette, a tree) + the point where the moonrise line aligns with that landmark + a long lens. The alignment is measured in minutes; it’s not caught unplanned, it’s planned with an app. In framing balance the composition principles — especially leaving space in the Moon’s gaze/movement direction — apply here too.

Common mistakes

• Exposing the Moon like a night subject: long exposure + high ISO = a white blob. Start from Looney 11; the Moon is a sunny daytime subject.
• Trusting the camera’s meter: the black sky fools the meter. Spot metering or manual — nothing in between.
• Waiting for the full moon for detail: the shadowless surface comes out flat. Craters live at the terminator line, in the intermediate phases.
• Never trying because “my lens is short”: 200mm + a crop gives a quite detailed Moon at sharing size. Waiting for perfect gear is an unshot photo.
• Leaving the moon-with-landscape to chance: climbing a hill without knowing where the Moon will rise is a lottery. A five-minute app plan gives the monthly alignment to the minute.