Everyone's gone to the moon

Learn to take fantastic frame-filling photos of the moon on the next clear night as Dan Mold reveals the techniques you need

- Dan Mold

THE MISSION

Get great cracking close-ups of the moon that show all of its lovely detail

Time needed

30 minutes

Skill level

Beginner

Kit needed

• Tripod

• DSLR, mirrorless or bridge camera with a telephoto lens

While the moon is a staggering quarter of a million miles away, it’d be easy to think that it’s far too distant to be able to photograph, especially without specialist kit anyway! But this month we’re going to show you that it is entirely possible to get shots of the moon, even when you’re at home, using anything from a compact, or bridge camera, to a Canon EOS DSLR or mirrorless model with a zoom lens.

A Canon DSLR or mirrorless camera with a zoom lens of 300mm or above would be ideal, though having a camera with an APS-C sensor can be beneficial here, as they have a crop factor that will make the moon appear bigger in the frame. This is a crop factor of 1.6x, so a 400mm lens will have an effective focal length of 640mm, making the moon appear much bigger in the frame. This crop factor only magnifies as the sensor size gets smaller, so it’s even easier to get decent shots of the moon with bridge cameras such as Canon’s SX70 HS PowerShot model, which boasts a ridiculous 65x optical zoom and a top-end focal length equivalent to 2470mm! So don’t worry if you don’t have a decent telephoto lens for your DSLR or CSC, these other cameras can work brilliantly too.