system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[ELI5] Why does the moon look so tiny in pictures when it looks so large from where I took it?
gpt
It looks small in pictures because it's a photograph.

1. The lens you are using. Most cell-phones/digital cameras have a fixed lens, and it is usually a wide angle. The zoom that is available isn't optical zoom. It's digital. This means that the lens doesn't make anything bigger, but the image itself is cropped. This is why you see a loss of resolution when you zoom in. If you have a dSLR with a zoom lens, you're physically moving lens elements to make the image bigger/closer. Another thing that wide angle lenses do is they make far away things look SMALLER than close things. This is why a lot of times when a person takes a selfie, they look like they have a big nose and small eyes: the nose is closer to the lens than the eyes, so it makes it bigger. 

2. You're viewing a very small image. This is mostly psychological. You're looking at a small photograph, and in comparison, the moon is huge, so it makes it look even smaller. Think of it this way: you take a picture of your dad, and he looks smaller in the picture than how he really is. The reason it's not so apparent is because you have a better reference of your father since you see him physically in front of you (as opposed to far away like the moon). Now, if you want a larger version of your father, you would have to print a bigger picture.