Shooting the Moon

Every once in a while, people would ask me how to shoot the moon.  Many would argue that you need a dSLR.  Well, not necessarily.  I think you just need a camera with plenty of zoom and manual controls.  I've even seen photos taken from Canon SX40 HS and it looks good.  So as always, just try with what you have first before setting off to buy anything.

For the settings, here's a guide that you may want to follow:

1. Set the Metering mode to "Spot metering".  Setting's location varies in every manufacturer or sometimes even models of the same make so it would be best to dust off the owner's manual that came with the camera to look where it is located.  In Canon, mostly if you press Menu key, you should be able to see the metering option in there.
2. Set the camera mode to Manual.  If your camera doesn't have a manual setting, you can still try using auto mode but I'm pretty sure it's not going to look good.  
3. Set the aperture (f) to around f8.  
4. Set shutter speed to 1/25sec.
5. Set ISO to the lowest.  It's usually 100 for Canon and 200 for Nikon.
6. Put the camera to a tripod or something sturdy and fully zoom in to the moon

This is just a rough guide.  The f and shutter speed values could vary depending on weather conditions and the look you want to achieve so just play around with it.  Here's a couple of shots that I did a while back.