The coupling of various charmonium mesons to a photon is studied using lattice QCD, giving access to radiative form factors and transitions, and probing the mesons’ structure. Methods are developed which allow the robust determination of amplitudes, including those involving an excited state as well as multiple form factors, for a range of kinematics. These are applied in dynamical lattice QCD calculations using the distillation technique to compute the underlying three-point correlation functions. Form factors and amplitudes involving the low-lying charmonia, ηc, J/ψ, χc0 and $$ {\eta}_c^{\prime } $$
η
c
′
, are calculated, demonstrating the methods and providing the first dynamical lattice QCD results for some quantities.