Pictures taken of the moon feels fake (S23 Ultra)

[ruuvvi]

I've taken couple of pictures from the moon, latest 4am this morning. When looking at the moon, it looked absolutely great, quite yellow halo around and and thin clouds surrounding, deep blue sky behind. But when I opened camera and started to zoom it, on certain zoom level bigger than 10x, all the yellow disappeared and all the clouds too leaving just cold white moon itself with black background. It didn't look like the same moon at all. There seems to be a LOT of processing in camera.

I'm wondering is there a way to took "actual" pictures of the moon looking natural? What kind of settings those might be?

[Carlvig]

You could try to play around with the pro settings or expert RAW. On the native settings it tends to automatically apply shutter speed settings in order to block out the bright light as you zoom in. Anything past 10X is digital zoom and loss of detail. I found that I actually picked up better detail taking pics of a half moon in the city rather than when I was on holiday taking pics of a full moon in a clean sky, the moon was just too bright.
Personally I think it's a nifty gimmick and a great party trick, however if I was to get serious about taking good shots of the moon I'd have to opt for a descent telescope/camera setup.

[Glenntech]

I don't think it's fake. Just when you zoom in, the AI algorithm will recognise its the moon and try to sharpen the image and help to track and steady the image

When you zoom further in on celestial objects, the blue of the earth's atmosphere does disappear.
I get it when I'm using my telescope. There's no electronics on my telescope at all. Just optical.
The earth's atmosphere despite what it looks like. It's very thin and as such, easy to see through

[ruuvvi]

Maybe not fake but when camera removes everything else than the moon itself and changes colors too, it certainly looks like a fake. And when it happens on a certain zoom level, it feels even more like a fake.

[Glenntech]

As I say, the AI algorithm will recognise what it is and automatically adjusts it.
Personally I think you'd get a better result using the Pro mode and tripod
Or even Expert RAW

[Shamrock_Sean]

How can you call it fake when you actually took a photo of the moon?? 🤣 Seriously

[ruuvvi]

Well, if picture looks totally different than reality showing in front of your eyes, I can call one of those a fake 😁

A deepfake. Only real thing is the round shape of the object I'm seeing.

[LMay]

I don't think it's fake just the settings or the software used to take the picture. When I took my picture I was surprised at how bright the moon was when zoomed in and had the most problems trying to keep the phone steady.