Back or Front too dark or bright

[vicarious1]

Hi.
I have a 8080 Olympus and a newer compact NV10 Samsung 10Mpix.
The Samsung seems to put me more often than wanted in a awkward light position where

a/ if I focus on the front of a landscape the back will be overexposed if the front is darker
b/ if I focus on the back of landscape that is sunny and bright the front will be under exposed so dark that the composition would be ugly.

Focusing on the in between area does not seem to be solution.

How to trick/set a digital camera in general to overcome such problems?
I never have this problem with my big Olympus 8080.

I must give it to the Samsung the MACRO is amazing!

I tried to upload a pic but with a max file size of 19.5kb ?
I can't reduce a 620 x 480 pix to only 19.5kb in Photoshop
(even at quality 1 only)

[HockeyFan]

There are a number of techniques, that would differ depending upon the subject and the environment.
For one thing, you'd need to be set on manual. I would generally spot meter and check levels at one end and then check levels at the other. It's possible that I'd take several shots trying to average between and get soemthing good out of it.
Another idea would be to use a gradudated nd filter which would take away some of the blown out sky in the background.

There are also some post processing techniques to solve the problem as well.

Generally, if its a great subject and I love the sky as well as the landscape and the subject, then I'll set up a tripod and take three bracketed shots and do some HDR processing. This gives me the best exposures on each aspect of the whole shot.
And although your p&s probably doesn't have these issues, because it probably meters differently and "averages" for you, the HDR would still be an imiprovement over that. This is because HDR will give you a much wider range of color and light intensity than you could get with a standard camera sensor.

The easiest solutions deal with filtering and experimenting with different exposure settings. But if you want that really great photo, I'd recommend the HDR processing whenever you can. Obviously, it's not something you do on every shot.