Great advice about nailing exposure

If you are shooting RAW you want to use whole dynamic range of your camera and push histogram to the right as much as possible without blowing highlights. It is a bit tricky, because camera calculated histogram based on JPG converted by your camera shooting settings. That's while you should have neutral settings for saturation or contrast. Problem is with white balance - in some situation WB can overblow red or blue channel in camera jpg used for histogram and when you expose with this you underexpose your raw files. Simple solution - you have to set WB manualy. Here are instructions and file for D700 http://www.roesand.com/general/173-nailing-exposure-with-uniwb-for-the-nikon-d700

Cant find the same for D5000 at this moment

If you are still shooting JPG, hold your dreams how better camera body would make you to be a better photographer

Thanks Thom Hogan for point this problem out