Which one?

jaansu

Last night I took a long exposure shot of the crescent moon but you could see the rest of the moon.

At first I crudely got rid of the dark bit of the moon.

Early evening moon by Jack Arigho, on Flickr

I had second thoughts about cloning the rest of the moon out so here's the original.

Early evening moon-1 by Jack Arigho, on Flickr

I'm not sure which I prefer. What do you think?

dinneenp

Without a doubt the first one, in the second seeing the rest of the moon is distracting and measures the moon look messy compared to the first one.

DaireQuinlan

I'd start of by either using a tripod or at the very least taking it at more than 1/30. Tons of motion blur in those. That'll result in the bright bit of the moon being correctly exposed, the dark bit being a lot more dark. It's up to you whether you want to edit a shot into something that's completely unrepresentative of what was there, I wouldn't.

FlipperThePriest

Isn't what you see trailing as oppose to motion blur? 30 sec exposure at 70 mm?

There are good online tools for calculating maximum exposure time given focal length to eliminate trail, handy for night sky photography.

For moon exposures: http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/astronomy/MoonExposureCalculator.html

Stars exposures: http://www.sceneplanner.com/tool3.php