johnmccarthy Loc: North Hampton NH

This should help, Vicky. Crazy settings, but it always works.

Attached file:
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Attached file:
(Download)

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Yes. Stars move relatively slower and you would have to exceed 20 seconds of exposure before you start to get motion issues (star trails). The Moon is much closer and moves relatively much faster across the sky, so the exposure is must be much shorter.

tetherington

Ah. The moon is in bright sunlight and you are trying to get the moon as well as clouds that are illuminated by reflected moonlight, which is much darker than the moon. I doubt averaging the exposure will ever work. You need to find a way to shoot for the moon (daylight) and lighten the clouds in processing. Control points in Capture NX2 would help. There may be other ways. I've never tried picture stacking, but what I read on this forum from others makes me think it might work.

hj Loc: Florida

My reply may not be helpful as I'm shooting the moon with a Canon SX50 bridge 50X superzoom. But attaching my shot from this morning and the accompanying settings.

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jkfrankum

Nice shots of the moon!

optic Loc: Southwestern United States

By now, this reply is somewhat belated --my apologies.

I am hardly an astrophotographer but since I regularly use some of the expensive lenses and DSLR equipment mentioned by the other contributors to this topic, the moon question urged me to look back and see what I may have accomplished in the past. The survey, going back a decade, turned up three "keepers":

The best of these (attached) was made with the dusty, heavily automated little pocket camera, a Nikon Coolpix 510, that I keep in my pack for emergency back-up and snapshots. The data I was able to retrieve says: 1/400 @ 180mm, f5.9, ISO 400, taken on 12/14/2013. --Actually I don't specifically recall the occasion.

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stephen901 Loc: Leander, Texas

Here's a shot I took using my Nikon D40 using my telescope and not a camera lens.