Don't feel badly about not matching the meters in SLRs; they make good negatives because a) negative film has a LOT of forgiveness built into the process, and b) the meters are, in some cases, "adjusted" to offset errors in other places, like shutter speeds (especially true in older cameras). Not to mention almost all of them are "calibrated" to overexpose by 1/3 to 1/2 stop compared to an actual light level measurement and manual calculation.

Remember, a light meter isn't just a light meter -- it's a little analog computer (like a slide rule, kind of) built onto the face of the meter proper, so you can dial in film speed, read the needle, and take the shutter and aperture settings right off the dial. And unless you're shooting chromes, I wouldn't worry so much about having Polaroids to test the light. You can get pretty darned close to what the "masters" have done by rating the film one stop slower than box speed, taking an incident or averaging reading, compensating for backlight if needed and for exceptionally light or dark subject (open the lens for light, close for dark -- the meter wants to make them all middle gray), then just shooting. If it's *really* critical, bracket +1 and -1; even 4x5 isn't *that* expensive.

If you're shooting chromes, carry on with testing the meter and shooting your 'roids; you need all the help you can get...