How to take great images of the moon

The gear

Any Nikon mirrorless camera with the right lens can be set up to take great pictures of the moon. And as we’ll be using a telephoto lens, if you have a crop sensor DX model you can take advantage of the extra reach you’ll get. To magnify the moon, and also create a foreshortening compression effect between the background object (the moon) and the foreground (such as mountains or buildings), it’s best to have a lens with at least a 300mm focal length for an FX camera and 200mm for a DX. With an FX camera, you can also put it in DX mode to take advantage of the extra reach in your EVF or monitor. The longer the focal length, the more magnified the moon will be and the stronger the compression effect. To keep everything steady you’ll also need either a tripod or somewhere you can secure the camera and a means of remotely pressing the shutter (Nikon’s free SnapBridge app is your friend here).

The other alternative, if you want close ups of the moon, is the Nikon Coolpix P1100, a fixed zoom lens camera with a focal length of up to 3000mm – and using digital zoom to get to 6000mm! The Coolpix P1100 even has its own ‘moon mode’ setting, which helps optimise your exposure settings automatically.

Switch to manual

The first mistake in photographing the moon is to assume that because it’s nighttime you need low light exposure settings. Since it’s reflecting the light from the sun, a full moon is actually a very bright object in a dark sky, so getting your exposure correct is key. A good place to start is the ‘Looney 11 rule’. In manual mode, set your aperture to f/11 and then set your ISO as the inverse of your shutter speed – for example ISO 100 and 1/100 second. This will give you a good basis from which you can start to tweak to get a perfect exposure. Speaking of shutter speed, the moon moves surprisingly quickly, so anything lower than 1/100 second could result in some blurring. White Balance can be set to daylight (since the moon is reflecting sunlight). Importantly, make sure you’re capturing images in RAW, as you’ll need maximum dynamic range available when editing to balance out the bright moon with the darker surroundings if there are other objects in the frame. You can also bracket exposures to get the moon right in one and the foreground right in another, and then create a composite of the two. There’s a more detailed look at bracketing here.

Learning to crop

Because the moon is often small in the viewfinder or monitor, even with a telephoto lens, images like these are often cropped in. With a great hi-resolution sensor (and keeping the ISO low to avoid noise), you can focus in on one smaller area of the image, making the moon larger in your composition. When you have your image lined up in the monitor or EVF, think about how it might be cropped afterwards for maximum effect before you take the shot.

Phases of the moon

Planning ahead and timing are important when taking pictures of the moon. There are two main things to consider: what phase the moon is in and what time of day you’re capturing. The moon goes through several different phases over the course of each four-week lunar cycle: full, waning gibbous, waning crescent, new moon, waxing crescent, waxing gibbous and back to full. Different phases of the moon are visible at different times – for example a full moon is visible all night, whereas a waxing gibbous can be seen from the afternoon until around midnight and a waning gibbous from midnight until morning. There are lots of ways to track the moon, including websites and phone apps, many of which also track weather and cloud cover predictions so you can plan ahead.

The amount of light the moon reflects in its different phases will also affect your composition and settings. A new crescent moon is pretty dim, so you may need to adjust your exposure settings to let in more light, for example. Also, a full moon looks great as a large, glowing disc, maybe as part of a landscape composition, but can be a little ‘flat’ on its own. For single images of the moon, it can be more effective to be a few days either side of the full moon, where the light is coming more from the side and therefore creates more shadows on the surface, accentuating features such as craters.

Time of day

Depending on your desired composition, the time of day you choose can have a marked effect on the outcome. If you catch the moon rising on the horizon, it will look much bigger as it's an optical illusion. The downside is that you can pick up more atmospheric interference in the image, blurring parts of the moon. By contrast, a moon high in the sky late at night will look smaller, but is liable to be sharper. During the waxing gibbous phase, before the full moon, it can be visible from the afternoon in a blue sky, which can create a completely different effect.

Get creative

Since a frame-filling image of the moon is a (nearly) grey object on a black background, try setting the Picture Control on your camera to mono and adjust the red filter to accentuate the contrast. Or with a moon/landscape image try using a Nikon Imaging Cloud Recipe to add a whole new look to your photos. The one thing we can all take for granted is that the moon will be there (clouds permitting), so there’s no excuse not to get out there and experiment at different times and with different styles to capture some magical moments in the skies above.