Moon

[Tthines86]

How do you take a picture of the moon and make it look like the moon instead of a white spot.

[Sameer K]

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. We are here to help.

Could you please share the device from which you wish to take the shot? If you plan to use a mobile camera as a baseline, you can zoom on the moon and use a low-exposure lock. There are a lot of videos and tutorials which might help on youtube.
If you wish to use Lightroom's In-app camera to capture, please use this article as a reference to learn about the tools: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/using/capture-photos-mobile-ios.html

We hope this helps.

Regards,

Sameer K

[Sue Townsend Photography]

My photography instructor told me years ago to think about it this way:  the moon has full sun shining on it, so adjust your camera's settings as if you were taking a daylight shot and use a tripod....and practice practice practice!  Hope this helps 🙂

[Jao vdL]

Fun! This is something I teach people in photography classes. The moon is lit by direct sunlight, so the sunny 16 rule applies just like for objects on earth that are in direct sunlight. This rule says that at f/16 you should use a shutter speed that is the inverse of your ISO. So at f/16, ISO 100, you should use 1/100 of a second. However, since the moon's albedo is 0.12, meaning that it reflects 12% of the sunlight, this would make the moon appear as it really is: dark grey. So since we are used o thinking of the moon as a bright object, compensate for this by increasing by two stops (i.e. a factor of 4 more light, so you make it appear as if the moon is really 50% reflective), so you go to moon/8 rule. Meaning that you use f/8 and shutter that is 1/ISO. This will correctly expose your moon to make it bright white but not overexposed.

Furthermore, you need a quite long lens to get an image that actually has any detail on the moon. All the images you see online with giant moons in landscapes are faked in Photoshop with a separate image of the moon taken with a very long telelens simply photoshopped in the sky like my joke image below. The moon image was taken at 500 mm, ISO 1600, f/5.6, 1/800s, which is exactly the moon/8 rule. The foreground is taken at 16mm.

[Rob_Cullen]

I remember the "Luny Eleven" rule 🙂   f11 at 1/ISO

That is 1-stop 'over' compared to the "Sunny Sixteen" rule.

@Jao vdL suggestion is great!

[JohanElzenga]

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@Tthines86 wrote:

How do you take a picture of the moon and make it look like the moon instead of a white spot.

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As the tags of your message are "iOS" and "iPhone", am I correct to assume that you are using your iPhone camera? The manual exposure possibilities of this camera are limited, but if you use the built-in camera in Lightroom mobile, then try this: First select 'Professional' on the left of the big release button and then move the Exp towards the left till you like what you see.