If you’re new to photography welcome aboard, and there’s no way around the simple fact that you’ve got a lot to learn. The quick tutorial below is designed to short-circuit your learning curve by revealing five common mistakes made by beginners and how to avoid them.

Stijn Borgers (AKA Sightseeing Stan) is a German freelance photographer based in Germany’s beautiful Black Forest. His goal in the 11-minute tutorial below is to set you on the right path with a handful of tips and tricks that will “help take your photography to the next level and capture beautiful, memorable shots.”

Making mistakes in part of learning and adapting to any new artistic endeavor; the trick is not to repeat the errors of your ways. By paying close attention to this rule, your skills will quickly evolve, and you’ll no longer consider yourself a beginner in short order.

One of the first challengers you’re like to encounter is achieving a proper exposure without losing any details in an image. According to Borgers, a big mistake with this goal is trusting what you see through the viewfinder or on your camera’s rear LCD. That’s because, in Borgers’ words, “those are typically not that reliable, and chances are you’ll end up with an overexposed or underexposed shot.

Borgers demonstrates how to employ a few features in your camera, like the histogram and the “blinkies” so you you can consistently dial in a correct exposure under a variety of lighting conditions. By following his advice you can cross exposure off your list.

Another mistake to avoid is crooked horizons or photographs that aren’t level, and you’ll see how getting things straight makes a big difference in the impact of your photos. In some cases this “disturbing” error creates bad empathy and may ruin an otherwise nice shot. Most camera have built-in tools to help you get things right.

Borgers’ other tips include using aperture and shutter speed settings in he correct way for the task at hand, achieving the proper depth-of-field, focusing techniques, lens choice, and more.

There’s much more to learn for photographers of all skill levels on Borgers’ instructional YouTube channel. So pay a visit and subscribe when you have time.

On a related topic, we also suggest you check out the tutorial we posted from another accomplished pro, explaining several helpful tips for those new to landscape photography.

EV-Compensation is an important concept to understand if you want to consistently capture properly exposed images in the camera. Also known as Exposure Compensation, this setting is a feature in just about any camera you own, and when used properly it often eliminates the necessity of balancing tones during the editing process.

In basic terms this helpful tool enables you to easily override the exposure setting chosen by your camera. It’s particularly useful when photographing scenes with uneven light, or those with overly bright highlights or dark shadows. In other words, you can take control by manually adjusting tones in an image.

As you’ll see in the tutorial below from instructor Booray Perry, EV-Compensation works differently depending upon the camera exposure mode you’re using. Perry notes that some cameras have a dedicated physical dial on the top for making necessary adjustments, while others require a button press or the rotation of a wheel for selecting the value you want.

In either case, most cameras enable you to modify exposure from -3EV to +3V and some offer an even greater range. In either case, making the adjustments is easy and effective, and you can view the result on the rear LCD or in the viewfinder in real time before snapping the shutter.

When shooting in Aperture Priority mode, for example, you choose an f/stop and the camera provides what is “thinks” is the appropriate shutter speed, but depending upon the scene at hand, that combination may fail to deliver a good result. Perry says that in this case EV-compensation works it’s magic “by changing your shutter speed or ISO—but it won’t change your aperture setting.”

When using other modes, let’s say Shutter Priority, EV-Compensation has different ramifications, but in basic terms you choose the parameter of most importance (like a fast shutter speed for action shots) and the camera does the rest. In other works, accurate photos with “less thinking.”

If you’re looking for more simple explainers like this one, head over to Perry’s YouTube channel and take a look.

We also suggest you check out another helpful tutorial we posted recently, explaining how to use Selective Color to fix hot spots and highlight blowouts in Photoshop.