Here is really important tip to remember when photographing the moon.

‘It’s not night time there where you are looking!’. The moon is in full sunlight and so the camera needs to told one way or another that a daylight exposure is required. It might not be a problem if you are using a 4000mm lens where you can fill the entire frame but for normal everyday lenses where a severe crop is required, normal camera auto exposure has no chance of getting it right. We are not talking about a few stops of correction here on the camera’s auto exposure but full manual control.

Fortunately getting the exposure right is quite easy using the image preview and simply looking to see if you have captured lunar detail or just a big white blob.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 570, Our Celestial Neighbor’ 1/100 f/14 ISO100 380mm