1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
If any automatic exposure is used (especially with evaluative metering) the camera notices the blackness of the nigtht sky, assumes the sky is underexposed, and it tends to over-expose the moon. This blows out any details on the surface.
The exposure guideline suggests that at f/11 (and only at f/11 for this guideline to work) that the shutter speed is simply the inverse of the ISO setting. E.g. at ISO 100 then the shutter speed should be 1/100th sec; at ISO 200 then the shutter speed should be 1/200th, etc.
Here's an example
You can see a larger version on my Flickr page: https://flic.kr/p/TDsy5A
You don't have to use f/11... you can use f/8 or f/5.6, or any f-stop... as long as you know how to trade "stops" of aperture for stops of ISO or shutter speed. e.g. if you used f/8 (which is one stop brighter then f/11) then you'd need to either reduce the ISO by a stop, or reduce the shutter speed by a stop to balance the exposure.
To control this, you'll need to use manual exposure - don't even meter. Just dial in the exposure and shoot.
Moon exposures like the one above are typically presented after the photographer has post-processed them. The image above has had a white balance adjustment as well as some exposure & contrast adjustment, and I also typically apply a bit of sharpening to help the craters pop.
What most folks fail to realize is, it is always daylight on the Moon. It isn't night time up there! 
@ebiggs1 wrote:What most folks fail to realize is, it is always daylight on the Moon. It isn't night time up there!
You read my mind. So, what WB settings should be used?
@Waddizzle wrote:
@ebiggs1 wrote:What most folks fail to realize is, it is always daylight on the Moon. It isn't night time up there!
You read my mind. So, what WB settings should be used?
I shoot everything in RAW. But if using JPEG, just set it to Daylight (Sun).
My astrophotography camera (Canon EOS 60Da) is about 4-5x more sensitive to "reds" than a typical camera, so all the images come out looking very warm and I always have to adjust the white balance in post processing.
@TCampbell wrote:
@Waddizzle wrote:
@ebiggs1 wrote:What most folks fail to realize is, it is always daylight on the Moon. It isn't night time up there!
You read my mind. So, what WB settings should be used?
I shoot everything in RAW. But if using JPEG, just set it to Daylight (Sun).
My astrophotography camera (Canon EOS 60Da) is about 4-5x more sensitive to "reds" than a typical camera, so all the images come out looking very warm and I always have to adjust the white balance in post processing.
That's just it, though. When I dial in "Daylight", the Moon turns orange, way too warm.
BTW, I've always thought the Moon was a near ideal reflector of sunlight, meaning that it reflects visible frequencies uniformly.
@Waddizzle wrote:
@TCampbell wrote:
@Waddizzle wrote:
@ebiggs1 wrote:What most folks fail to realize is, it is always daylight on the Moon. It isn't night time up there!
You read my mind. So, what WB settings should be used?
I shoot everything in RAW. But if using JPEG, just set it to Daylight (Sun).
My astrophotography camera (Canon EOS 60Da) is about 4-5x more sensitive to "reds" than a typical camera, so all the images come out looking very warm and I always have to adjust the white balance in post processing.
That's just it, though. When I dial in "Daylight", the Moon turns orange, way too warm.
BTW, I've always thought the Moon was a near ideal reflector of sunlight, meaning that it reflects visible frequencies uniformly.
My images of the moon always look too warm because that's the result of my using a camera that is significantly more sensitive to reds (desgined that way because emission nebulae tend to have a lot of hydrogen alpha wavelength light -- which is red). So I always have to adjust the white balance manually (using custom).
However, since I do shoot RAW, I opened the .CR2 in DPP (DPP will generally apply the same correction that you would have had if you set the adjustment in-camera). I found that nearly all settings resulted in an orange moon except for Tungsten (which was very blue) and Florescent (which was grey with a slight cold blue/purple cast) EXCEPT for "Auto". Auto generally has a bad reputation because usually it guesses wrong, but for the Moon ... it actually came out with a fairly neutral. As I move my mouse around the image while reading off the pixel values, they're extremely close to being a decent neutral gray.
So I'd have to suggest using 'Auto' if you shoot JPEG in camera... assuming you prefer to shoot JPEG (I do everything in RAW).
