fukkin meters, how do they work

old 400 delta should be fine; my not-especially-technical approach if i think i'm going to get something washed out is to just push it up anyway, because then you'll get *some* kind of thing going on, rather than the just-washed-out-400-style-pics you fear.

yeah maybe expose at 200 since film sometimes loses sensitivity once it's expired.

my suggestion would be to keep a logbook of your exposure info. maybe bracket to see how changes in exposure affect the negative. other than that, just shoot!

http://www.amazon.com/Photography-10th-Barbara-London/dp/0205711499

This was the standard 'textbook' in my school's photo program - buy an old edition cheap, something like the sixth or seventh edition should be all film (though this covers way, way more than film/darkroom work)

http://www.amazon.com/Photography-7th-Barbara-London/dp/0130282715/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316896141&sr=1-1

dunno if this is useful to you at all, but I referred to it quite a bit when I was developing my own film:
http://www.amazon.com/Film-Developing-Cookbook-Darkroom-Vol/dp/0240802772/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1316896204&sr=8-5

thx for the recs man

so I've been dicking around in my yard and testing my gf1 sensor against the sunny 16 rule and it's kind of amazing how well the two match up? also went through a few old photos and sure enough, if I (laboriously) spitball the exposure i can get pretty close (one stop) of the recorded meter value. p cool