How to Photograph the Moon at Night

Insert a fully-charged battery into your camera and an empty memory card. Attach the longest lens you own, or extend the lens out as far as possible. Fill the viewfinder with as much of the moon as possible to achieve the best results.

Attach your camera to a tripod and point the camera toward the moon. Turn your camera on and set the exposure mode to manual exposure mode. Press the menu button and toggle to the ISO setting, and change this number to "400." ISO is the camera's light sensitivity; increasing the ISO means you won't need to use as high of a shutter speed. If you set the ISO too high, though, your picture will have more noise in it.

Press the menu button on the back of the camera and toggle to "Long Exposure N/R." The "N/R" stands for noise reduction. This feature will reduce the amount of digital noise that will appear in your pictures when using a longer exposure.

Press the shutter release halfway down to pre-focus the camera and to activate the camera's light meter. If your lens is long enough and the moon fills 2/3 of the viewfinder or more, then slightly over-expose the picture by a half to a full stop. You need to do this because cameras measure light on a "center weighted average," and if the moon is filling this much of the viewfinder, the camera will under-expose the picture. If the moon is filling less than half of the viewfinder, then you need to under expose the picture by a half to full stop.

Press the shutter release to take the picture. Press the review button to review the picture and make any adjustments to exposure before taking a second picture.