Photographing the moon? Tonight is full, need settings advice?

So i photograph every full moon, i don't know a way to get the details on the craters AND definition in the scenery how do you do that? I use my point and shoot fuji s5000 and put it on the "M" setting that works for the craters but then the whole backround and everything else is black. Then I use a night setting it shows all the pretty scenery but the moon itself is all blown out and over exposed, what should I try instead?

also I have a nikon D100, which i'm still getting used to, what setting should i use to capture the moon with that one?

I'm sure you would have figured it out.

The same sun shines on the moon as the earth, to the sunny 16 rule applies.

Since there's no atmosphere on the moon, you may have to stop down a half stop.

This only applies to your D100

The bets time to get detail of the moons craters is actually when the light from the sun is to its side (half moon) since that light will provide more shadows caused by the moons craters.

The Fujifilm S5000 does not seem to have a manual exposure option so setting it to 1/ISO @ f/16 will be problematic.

Don't expect the moon to fill your cameras frame. When I shoot the moon, I use a 500 mm lens with 2x telextender on a APS-C sensored camera. That means I'm using the equivalent of a 1, 500 mm lens and the moon just fills the frame.

The only way to get details in the Moon and craters and details in the foreground on Earth is if they are the same exposure. So you have to take your photograph before the Sun sets, you need the same amount of light from the Sun to be falling on both parts of your image, the Moon and the foreground.

The Moon is always the same exposure (assuming a clear sky), it's always ISO 100, 1/125th of a second at f8, that will always capture the detail in the Moon, it's the same setting for a partial Moon too, the light falling on the bright parts of a crescent Moon is always the same.

So your foreground needs to be at the same exposure setting (or similar). After dark the only way is to illuminate the foreground with loads of flash or continuous light and you will need lots.

The problem will be that the Moon will not show as much as you will have lowered the contrast between the foreground and the Moon. There are many times when the Moon rises before the Sun sets, look how 'flat' it looks, you need the dark background to make it stand out, you need high contrast.

It's actually easier to take an image of the Moon correctly exposed and copy it into an image of the foreground.

In 35mm format you need a 2500mm lens to fill the frame with the Moon. Divide that by your crop factor for the sensor in your camera. The full Moon takes up almost exactly 1° of our field of view from the Earth (it varies slightly), a 2500mm lenses field of view is 1° in 35mm format and the Moon takes exactly 5 minutes to travel it's own diameter, so you will have to be constantly altering your tripod.

This shot was taken with a Panasonic G1 (half frame sensor) on a 650mm telescope. With the crop factor that's the 35mm equivalent of a 1300mm lens

By using a 24mm lens on the telescope and projecting it's image onto my G1's sensor I got this shot.

This works out at around a 2200mm lens in 35mm format, nearest I could get to 2500mm.

First of all, you need a long lens. On the D100, that means at least a 300mm lens.

Set the shutter at the reciprocal of the ISO. If you are using ISO 200, set the shutter to 1/200.

Set the aperture at f/16.

Shoot.

You MIGHT like f/11 better or at least as well.

A tripod helps, even at these higher speeds.

You might be able to find these settings on your Fuji, but the sensor is so small, your image quality would not be nearly as good as the D100.

Add'l:

Oh. If you mean Earth-bound scenery, you might be able to composite images the way I did here:

Read the description under the image to see how I did it. It requires a stable tripod and a gentle hand and Photoshop.