great stuff, thanks!
One of the things I realize I run into is simply getting baffled trying to figure out exactly what the meter is doing and how it's reading. I've always used a spot meter, I guess I'm kind of stuck in that mentality. Shooting with a Leica M2R (military issue of M3) I loved the fact you could push the 135mm lens frame in the viewfinder and get the meter read area... it'd be cool if a DSLR gave you that in Spot mode. (Does any camera do that? Again, for all the cameras we test, this is never stuff I've looked at.)
...'course, it'd be nice if I used the same camera more than a month or two.
Good point on the histogram... I've always argued that the histogram is the single most powerful tool in digital photography, reaching back to my Zone System roots- simply because it tells you exactly what you have, no estimates, no corrections. That is, IF you have the camera settings set to your preferences. I'd argue that's the single most important aspect of using the histogram- set the contrast, saturation, color space to your preferences in the camera, since that determines how the JPEG preview will be processed, and how the histogram will display...
All this has brought back memories of my college days shooting weddings... and I used to do the same thing. Take a couple meter readings around the room, set the exposure, and adjust it without reading again (usually just bumping it up or down a stop) without metering again, just so I could shoot fast...