Reading through this thread, I see that ryunin is metering the scene AS IF he were using color transparency film or digital capture--by metering the brightest sky value, locking that value in, and the re-composing and photographing. That is not a the way to meter and expose a scene when one is shooting B&W negative film; that is a method called "pegging the highlights", and is the way one exposes narrow-latitude transparency film.
As far as using the "Matrix" metering of a camera, to me "Matrix" means,specifically NIKON's own color-evaluative light metering, and no other brand. But it is also a huge mistake to use a multi-point, whole-frame light metering pattern as the basis for reflected light readings done using a camera as the "light meter". Nikon's Matrix metering is RGB color-aware, as well as distance aware, and it uses distance, focus distance, and RGB values, as well as simple reflectance values, to discern the actual color of subjects, and as such it is a "smart" metering system, and not a "dumb" metering system which measures ONLY reflectance values.
If you want to use a camera as a reflected light meter, you need to use it in something other than "Matrix" if it's a Nikon camera, and some other mode than evaluative, or multi-area, or honeycomb metering if it is another brand. The best choice would be a very narrow-angle metering pattern like spot metering, or selective metering. A reaal, honest to goodness reflected light meter with an analog scale would be a wonderful tool for a beginner--an old-styler meter like a Weston Master IV would make the Zone System come to life, especially if you happened to have the original instruction book for it. Failing that, a newer meter like a Gossen Luna-Pro, with the analog scales, would really,really be helpful for a beginner to understand how to "See" the entire range of exposures, and see the way to "shift" light readings from one actual point to the desired point on the negative's scale.
One of the biggest problems is lack of understanding, and if the OP is measuring a bright highlight value and failing to "place" that at the right zone, or if the OP happens to read a deep shadow area and fails to place that at a low zone, and instead shoots at the suggested reading, it's possible he has terribly underexposed and then over-exposed shots, alternating throughout the rolls he's shooting.
