[Marc Sabatella]

I was shooting full manual the whole time, and was careful to just meter the moon. How do I actually get the clouds and stuff?

By metering off them instead of the moon. The moon is *MUCH* brighter than the clouds. There is no possible exposure that would render both well.

[Marc Sabatella]

I got the same double image. The main Moon image was over exposed and centered while it gave a second image underexposed like a reflection. I got about six or seven of these till I went to manual shutter and bracketed. If it was a reflection then it should have been in the manual shutter shots as well. That did not happen.

Coincidence. There is no possible way the image could be affected by whether exposure was setting automatically or manually - assuming you used the same exposure, you'd get the same image. If one had a reflection and the other didn't, that would be an accident of a slight change in the shooting angle (even just the movement of the moon might trigger that). While a filter is almost guaranteed to cause these reflections, it's possible to get them without a filter, particualr on a lens without "digital" coatings.

[Fogel70]

That also might be a reflection from the sensor (the low-pass filter, actually) onto the rear element of your M lens. The digital coatings currently applied to the rear elements of modern DA (digital optimized) lenses compensate for this tendency.

I'll be interested to read a solution to this problem since I plan to take some moon shots with a Takumar 500mm f/4.5 as soon as it warms up to at least double digits here.

I've seen long-exposure small-aperture moon photos on the Forum taken with super-telephotos (600mm - 1200mm) that are absolutely brilliant, so I know it can be done.

If using correct exposure on the moon the reflection will be much darker, probably so dark that it can not be seen. I have shot the moon with several old lenses and have newer had any problems with reflections. The oldest lens used was S-M-C Takumar 300/4 with an old 2x TC.