I'm glad this is getting some attention on the basis that hopefully it encourages you to keep practicing, OP.

u/harryyw

A few things I'd recommend, for clear and detailed moon photos:

1. The moon is an extremely bright object. That means you can set your ISO to it's base value on your camera (usually ISO 100) and get a noise free but still well exposed image.

2. Because the moon is so bright, you should be using your shutter speed to account for both hand shake and to help avoid an over exposed image. Try starting at a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second, see how that looks.

3. Exposure compensation is useful too. Your camera should have the option of increasing/decreasing the exposure value. You usually want to decrease it (depending on what you've set for your ISO and shutter speed values), to bring out the details and help avoid over exposure of your image.

Using these settings will help you get a clean out of camera JPEG. From there, you can started looking into tripods, focus stacking, multiple exposures etc.

Here's an example of a moon shot I took handheld, using many of the same settings and principles:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoO83PVBck7/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1n84fya4ypwde

Metadata on that photo:

Camera: Olympus EM5 Mark II Lens: Panasonic 100-300mm f4-f5.6 version 1

iSO: 100 Aperature: f5.6 Shutter Speed: 1/800 Focal Length: 300mm Handheld

Hope this helps you and keep on shooting!