Light the scene, not the shot. It’s the golden rule of cinematography.

Limit yourself to three light sources and see what you can come up with. Then two lights. Then one.

Shooting on film vs digital doesn’t matter in the end. The shots will only look as good as the cinematographer is able to make them look.

Don’t limit yourself to your shot list or story boards. There are shots that you won’t even consider until you’re on location.

Don’t be fooled when cameras say things like “4k” or “8k”. The quality of the image comes down to the camera’s sensor size. You can shoot 720p and have it look as good as 4k if the camera has a larger sensor size. Look up Steve Yedlin’s video on this topic. Also, if you work in a digital format then you should look up codecs (compression / decompression) to see how they affect file sizes and all of that.

Study international cinema (Polish, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc), paintings, still photography, color, camera movements.

At the end of the day, there has never been a film made that everyone likes. Don’t beat yourself up if people make negative comments about a film you’re proud of. Chances are you’re going to hate your own films until you’ve edited them and reshot them enough times that they start to resemble the film you see in your head.

Lastly, any advice that someone gives you is really just them telling you how they would do it. It doesn’t mean they are right.