Photographers love their affordable, fast, and easy-to-carry “nifty fifty” lenses that can be used to capture a wide range of scenes from landscapes and portraits to nature photos and more. When your images fail to meet expectations, and you’re not sure why, it’s likely because you’re making one or more common mistakes when shooting with a 50mm prime.

Instructor Martin Castein is a London-based landscape and portrait photographer with more than a few tricks up his sleeve. In this eight-minute episode he explains why images with a nifty fifty look a bit different, the big mistakes a lot of photographers make, and the best way to create great compositions with this standard prime lens.

Castein begins with a discussion of perspective and the variables you must understand for thoughtful, effective framing that differ from the approach you take with wider or longer focal lengths. As he says, by doing things right, “you can have the best of an 85mm telephoto and a 35mm wide-angle combined. And that’s why many photographers are so excited about the oft-ignored 50mm option.”

One consideration is that the closer you get to tall subjects, the more the angle tilts as you strive to include everything into the frame. Other problems occur, in reverse, when shooting down from a high camera position. Castein explains that, unlike with a normal lens, these converging verticals become visually acceptable and appear intentional when you get to a certain point with wide-angle photography.

On the other hand, short telephotos like an 85mm “force you to move back far enough so that these corrections happen naturally.” That’s because shooting from a greater distance tends to flatten out the perspective because you can often shoot straight on, rather than being forced to tilt the camera up or down.

Castein says the one big challenge with 50mm lenses is that “you’re slap bang in the middle, and what we get can be slightly off” unless you take advantage of the composition techniques that he recommends for taking advantage of everything that your nifty fifty can do. There’s nothing difficult to learn, except a slight shift in your mindset and the camera angles you choose.

There’s much more to learn about landscape photography on Castein’s popular YouTube channel, so be sure to take a close look.

And speaking of lens techniques, don’t miss the tutorial we posted last week from another landscape photography expert who demonstrates why every serious outdoor shooter needs a telephoto lens and how to use it to capture attention-grabbing images that stand out from the crowd.

Post-processing expert Christopher O’Donnell is adamant that “when you are processing a landscape photo in Lightroom you should be thinking about ONE thing throughout your entire workflow; namely, how to control perceived depth.” He chooses the word “control” purposefully, because that exactly what today’s tutorial is all about, rather than various enhancements.

O’Donnell’s Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials dig deep into both the how and why of editing techniques because this helps you understand the concepts behind photo processing and is the direct path to creating the landscape photos you desire. He describes today’s important concept like this: “Photography is a two-dimensional medium, so it’s up to us to use our skills and talent to manipulate that depth and create images that are visually compelling—both in the camera and Lightroom.”

In this 16-minute episode O’Donnell demonstrates four methods for creating a pleasing perception of depth by adjusting different types of contrast in Lightroom. He promises that these straightforward methods will enable you create a three-dimension look and “greatly enhance the quality of a final image.”

Forget about Lightroom’s Contrast slider for a moment and listen to what O’Donnell means by contrast in terms of what draws a viewer eyes to an image. As explains, the proper approach involves selectively increasing contrast in some parts of a photo and reducing it elsewhere within the frame to eliminate distractions that detract from your focal point.

The first thing to understand is that there’s a significant difference between Lightroom’s Contrast, Clarity, and Texture sliders. Or as O’Donnell says, “they may seem similar at first, but the quality and accuracy of these three common adjustments can vary greatly in terms of quality and accuracy.”

O’Donnell demonstrates exactly what happens when you adjust each slider, and why the sequence of your adjustments is critically important for avoiding damaged pixels or other unwanted side effects. By following his instructions you’ll be able “to pull out as much detail as possible from Raw files for the highest quality final image.”

There much more to learn on O’Donnell’s instructional YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit when you have tine to explore.

And don’t miss the powerful tutorial we featured earlier in which another elite photographer explains how he composes landscape scenes for maximum impact with simple techniques that YOU can master in minutes.