1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Accepted Solutions
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!
That's exactly right. But there is one caveat.
For a typical daylight (mid-day sun on a clear day) we can use the "Sunny 16" rule: if using f/16, just set the shutter speed to the inverse of your ISO (or ASA back in the film days) - the rule was great to know when you did photography back when cameras didn't have built-in light meters.
But the moon is actually a rather poor reflector of light. It's true tonality is roughly the shade of the sidewall of an old black tire... or an old asphalt road (not freshly paved road when it looks darker). A properly exposed image of the moon would actually look a bit dim because of this rather poor reflectivity.
The "Looney 11" suggests brightening it up by shooting 1 stop brigher than the "Sunny 16" rule (hence "Looney 11" rule).
The moon is technically in "sunlight" and the Sun is pumping out a VERY consistent amount of light. The light meter reading you could get 1000 years ago is the same meter reading you'd get today and it will be the same in another 1000 years. So there's no need to "meter" the moon as long as you know the rule. Just dial in the exposure and take the shot.
@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.
@ebiggs1 wrote:What most folks fail to realize is, it is always daylight on the Moon. It isn't night time up there!
Well, er, you could just as easily say that about the Earth. Yes, it's always daylight somewhere on the Moon, but not necessarily where you're looking. Remember: the "dark side of the Moon" is just a figure of speech.
