I use color curves. You manually manipulated the points in color curves to bring up whatever section tones you want. On my camcorder I’d use it to increase the contrast, which wasn’t very high out of the camera. So I’d bring up the better lit parts of the shot and brought down the darker parts.
On DSLR footage I don’t need it quite as much, and I try to keep the use of color curves minimal because if I even have to use them, it usually means something already wasn’t ideal during shooting, and there are blown out highlights with dark parts of the video that lack clarity.
Try it out and you’ll see what it does.