I went out with all three dogs today to shoot a quick example of different metering to account for lighting in snow - but it is adaptable for other lighting as well.
All of the metering for the pictures was "spot" metering, meaning that the camera picked the lighting based on the center of the frame, which I put on the dog. I shot with my Nikon, but most "point-n-shoot" cameras allow you to pick your metering and every one that I've seen has a +/- button for exposure compensation. None of them have been retouched or altered except to put the numbers on them. Look in your camera's manual and see if there is a "bracket" setting, that's what I used for these shots. I did 9 pictures in a row, at full stop increments, most will let you do fractions which lets you fine tune
You can see how different the camera treats all three dogs - who are actually good subjects for this because Connor is relatively "medium" colored. It was cloudy so the light is very flat.