This is a big issue for all budding photographers I reckon Stevo. Good subject.
And it leads me to the point of metering, specifically spot metering especially when the subject is back-lit as in the dwarf above.
My Canon has 4 metering settings, Evaluative metering, Partial metering, spot metering, and Centre-weighted average metering. Each setting does something slightly different to your light meter.
I normally leave mine on Evaluative Metering as it looks at the whole scene and bases the lighter meter sensitivity on the whole picture. It good for most general pictures. However when your subject is in a dark spot but there is a lot of light behind (like the dwarf), or very dark behind, switching to spot metering will tell the light meter that you only want to gauge the light in a rough spot at the centre of the view finder. It will then largely ignore the light behind the subject and tell you where you need to set your exposure based on the 'spot'.
For example, this would be a handy setting if taking a photo of a chicken inside a coup where you are standing in bright light and all around is quite bright. You may find that the camera (light meter) thinks there is a lot of light and therefore adjusts the exposure down thinking it needs to cut out some light, however the spot you want to photo is quite dark and therefore needs to expose more to gather more light on the chicken.
One of the short photography workshops I did they made us stand out in the sun, in Brisbane city, and take a photo inside of a building through the front open doorway from a fair distance. When you looked into the building it was extremely dark as we were standing in the bright sun. With the use of the spot metering setting we were able to get a clear photo of what was inside that building without over exposing the whole picture. Marvellous.
Like they say, most DSLR cameras are fairly even in what they can capture, it's mostly the settings the nut behind the lens uses that will determine the results.
Cheers,
