I ended up documenting the fires of 2003 in Glacier National park and surrounding areas, and I can't say that I ever found an effective solution to filtering and metering, I ended up putting every on auto on my AF camera and pushing the shutter button on high speed motordrive, on a manual camera, I would shoot at f/16 1/125 or 1/250 and pray for the best, wildfires are very difficult to shoot....
Here is one of the posters we produced from the 2003 fire season.
Dead Link Removed
Dave