Techniques are described for dynamic automatic exposure compensation within image capture devices. The techniques include dynamically adjusting a default target brightness for a scene to compensate an exposure value (EV) selected by an automatic exposure process. A sensor array obtains light information from the scene at a default target brightness and an image capture controller calculates brightness values of a plurality of regions in the scene based on the light information. An automatic exposure compensation module dynamically adjusts the default target brightness based on the brightness values for the plurality of regions in the scene and threshold values set for the sensor array to set an adjusted target brightness. The sensor array may then capture an image frame of the scene using an EV for the adjusted target brightness. The techniques also include building a hysteresis zone to substantially stabilize the adjusted target brightness over a sequence of image scenes.