About the Nikon D5000 (and most likely applies to all other cameras)?

Sometimes I'll be in a specific mode, Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority mainly, and the one that is being automatically adjusted by the camera will say Lo if it's too dark, or Hi if it's too bright. For example, if I'm in a dark room shooting in A, and I set it to f/3.5 (the max aperture), the shutter speed may read Lo, meaning it needs a long exposure time for it to be proper. However, I'd like to know what the exact time is. Is there any way to adjust this so it will say it?

The quickest way would be to set the camera to "M" and moving the bar on the exposure meter in your viewfinder up or down with the control wheel till the bar is in the middle of the meter. This will tell you what your shutter speed actually is. That might be a bit difficult to understand, refer to your owners manual for help if needed.

Happy shooting,
Ryan C.

When in manual mode it should give you some kind of reading on the exposure you will get with the settings you are using. Mine looks like this:

V
-2.1.0.1.2+

The V is the indicator and tells me what exposure my settings should give me. If it is over the -1 I know that I will underexpose by 1 stop and will have to either slow my shutter speed by one stop, open my aperture by one stop or increase my ISO by one stop. When the V is over 0 I should get proper exposure. But you need to use the meter properly to get a good reading first.