Originally posted by milesy I nearly always find that the shots are quite underexposed
But histogram to the left doesn't mean it's under exposed.
Originally posted by milesy this is a typical image where the histogram is very much to the left !!
And so it should be, there are no very bright or white areas, more darks and mids than anything else. It looks correct to me.
The histogram isn't about getting it evenly spread from left to right (you'd hardly succeed in night sky or snowfield shots) it's a graph showing you the low/mid/high pixel brightness levels across the whole image, massive spikes are where clipping is and where you've lost detail. If it's a black cat on a dark carpet, then it will be very much to the left, but well exposed.
Av means you're letting the camera decide the shutter speed and the ISO. The camera isn't intelligent enough to know what
you want and it often get's it wrong.
Of course, the other thing to consider is the difference between the camera LCD and your computer screen.