The Pro tip for shooting the moon

We’ve just had a full moon. Unfortunately, my planned shot of it rising over a well-known landmark in Edinburgh didn’t happen, thanks to some cloud at moonrise. However, an hour later, the lunar light finally became visible but higher in the sky. There is something magical about the moon, with all the craters and the shapes of the seas. But the problem is, most of the time, when we get the camera out to photograph the moon, we end up with something like this—a blob of white instead of the interesting detail of the lunar surface.

There is a very simple way to guarantee great moon shots every time: use a menu item that you’ve probably never touched before, the metering mode. Before I show you how we shoot the moon, let me tell you why the moon pictures end up looking like a large blob.

Metering modes tell the camera where to measure light. If you are using one of the shooting modes, such as auto, aperture priority or shutter priority, this will determine what exposure the camera chooses for you. If you are shooting in manual mode, it will determine the zero point on your light meter.

The default metering mode, the one your camera comes pre-set to when you take it out of the box, has a different name depending on your camera’s manufacturer. I shoot with Canon cameras, and they call it Evaluative metering. If you shoot with Nikon cameras, it’s called Matrix Metering. Sony, Fuji, Panasonic and many others will call it Multi or Multiple or a variation of that word. As well as making my job difficult when teaching my Switch to Manual workshops, there is a good reason why they all have different names: they are all trying to describe what the metering mode does in one word.

To describe this, we will take a journey onto the camera sensor. Regardless of the manufacturer, the camera takes multiple pixels on the sensor in a matrix pattern. It then takes a light meter reading from each of these individual pixels and sends each reading to the sensor’s processor. Here, the processor evaluates the total amount of light hitting the sensor by averaging the brightness and luminosity from each reading

Now, most of the time, if we are shooting in daylight, we might have some of the pixels in the sky area of the shot and some in the land bit of the shot, and when we average them together, it produces the right result, we press the shutter button, and the exposure looks good. However, we have two contrasting areas in the frame when shooting the moon. The vast majority of the image is of the dark sky, and the very bright moonlight is a much smaller element in the frame. When the processor evaluates the exposure, the average will be weighted towards the dark sky as many more pixels provide information in the sky than on the moon. That’s why we usually get a photograph of a well-exposed sky, but the moon has been blown out.

The solution is to switch to a different metering mode. You are best referring to your user manual to find exactly where it is in your menu system. In Canon cameras, it tends to be on the red shooting menus. Nikon cameras also have a metering option in the Photo Shooting menu. Go into the Camera Settings menu on Sony cameras, and the options will appear in the Metering Mode menu item. Fuji cameras break from the norm and hide the settings in a menu called Photometry in the Shooting Settings menu. Regardless of the manufacturer, the option we need to take is spot metering.

This time, the sensor will only evaluate the light hitting an area of around 2% of the sensor. For most camera models, the centre of the frame is measured, although some models allow you to define the point in a menu item.

I have switched to spot metering and placed the moon in the middle of the frame. I shoot manual, so whilst I have the moon in the centre, I have set the light meter to the centre reading. If you use auto, aperture or shutter priority, you can place the moon in the centre and press the shutter button. We now see the moon in all its glory. All the craters and seas on the surface are visible in our photo. The sky is darker, but are you bothered about the moon or the sky?

There are many other ways to control your exposure using spot metering, but essentially, it is used when the subject is either much brighter or much darker than the rest of the scene. Now, the next time the clouds eventually shift and you see the full moon, you, too, can get great lunar images.