I can appreciate that speed is of the essence when you are doing candid shots - that's one of the reasons I think a handheld meter would be a good idea for you. They aren't inherently more accurate than the built-in meter, BUT - and this is important - a good one will give you true spot metering capabilities. You should be on the lookout for a Sekonic L-508 or L-608; they will provide you with spot metering - and they can make bot incident and reflected readings (rather than having two different meters for the two different modes of metering). When it comes to grey cards - they are almost totally useless, and I will actually claim that they are more useless the more difficult the conditions are!! Again - The Perfect Exposure (the book previously referred to) or something similar might be a very good idea! Some key points about exposing photos got clarified for me by reading this book - and I actually thought I knew quite a bit about exposure:) When I migrated from a 20 years old Canon film-based SLR to the 20D earlier this year - I started out with a lot of crappy exposures. I bought this book, and haven't looked back since. Ok - enough nagging about that damn book - you are of course more than welcome to do what you please:))