When shooting the moon you will tend to have two challenges - the relatively small size of the moon, demanding a very long focal length, and the relatively high reflectance of the moon, relative to the black universe, risking over exposure.
With a shorter focal length lens, a good idea is to place the moon as an element within a contextual landscape - by a building, framed by a bridge or similar structure, shining through trees, for example.
In the following example, I deliberately allowed to moon to blow out to get the exposure on the tower structure correct, so it was not the dominant element in the image, but contributed to it by being located at the top of the tower.
If you want to isolate and magnify the moon, you need major focal length, and we're talking something around 600-800mm at this point; although in the images below, because I was using the 600mm lens on a crop-sensor camera, the Field of View (what the combination of lens and sensor record) is equivalent to using a 960mm lens on a Full-frame camera.
One of the challenges with super long telephotos is the interference of clutter from possible cloud, pollution, dust or even heat has in an urban area or during the summer. In the following example, I think there was some very, very light cloud up high.
As to exposure. I recommend using spot metering centred to isolate the area being read to the actual area of the moon. To get the right exposure may take several iterations, and is most likely best done in M mode where you control the variables without the camera changing them. The image above was done using that method to get the details of the moonscape.
Another option is to photography the moon when there is far less contrast against the sky - essentially as the sun is rising. This may produce a blue background, which can be interesting in its own right, or modified in post-production to greyscale.
Note that you can get much more texture by shooting when the moon is not full.
As others noted, with a shorter lens then your best bet is composition against an object or part of the landscape to capture a compelling image. As fall approaches, sometimes shooting through a leafless tree can provide a compelling look.
For emphasizing the moon itself, a long telephoto is a must. I got home fairly late last night from teaching a grad course and I noticed how incredibly bright the moon was as I was driving home to my rural location. The first two photos are captures from last night using a 5DS R, the first is with a Sigma 150-600 extended to its full 600mm length and the second is with Canon's 800mm f5.6. For comparison, here are a couple of images taken several years ago with the first captured using my 1DX III with the Canon 800 also using a 2X extender and the final photo was captured using the 1DX III body coupled to my Celestron telescope which provides the equivalent of using a 2800mm f10 lens. The longer focal lengths are very good at capturing detail but they also depend upon a very good clear and stable atmosphere to do well.
Rodger
Thank you Twiddler,
You can "attach" a camera to almost any telescope but what methods are available depends upon the telescope and camera. The lunar photograph using the Celestron was taken using an adapter that mounts a Canon body directly to the Celestron optical tube and I have an alternate adapter that allows the camera body to be used with the Celestron eyepieces installed for additional magnification. But a fairly simple alternative that will work with pretty much any telescope is an adapter that allows the camera with lens to "look" through the eyepiece, these are also available for smartphones.
I use a Sky Watcher equatorial mount that can also be used as a simpler azimuth mount when desired. With the proper hardware it will mount either a large telescope optical tube or a normal camera lens/camera combo and I use a ZWO ASI Air to run the setup via my iPad. This setup allows the use of a smaller ZWO tracking camera along with the main ZWO astronomy camera which uses a actively cooled Sony sensor and it has an adapter to fit Canon EF mount glass.
I haven't spent enough time with "space" photography but it definitely makes sports photography seem very simple by comparison!
Rodger
Good luck and take care of your back when moving it around because these big telescopes are HEAVY!
I stay in shape for lugging heavy cameras around through my other hobby of restoring vintage amateur radio gear. This candidate for restoration just arrived from Canada, a 23 kg Eddystone EA-12 receiver that was produced in Birmingham in the mid 1960s before making its way across the Atlantic to Canada. Eddystone made exquisitely refined mechanical tuning dial drives that they also sold to a few other manufacturers.
Rodger
