When just the last shot was left on the last of the two rolls I saw the dome over the reading hole, so when I pushed it back to reflective the light meter went from suggesting 5.6 for 30 seconds to 5.6 for less than half of 30. Also the incident light was the light falling on my meter not on the subject, so how would that be correct? Wouldnt I have to reflect of the subject to the camera for the incident light reading to show an incident light reading correctly? The scene was poorly lit so I might get away with long exposure, but I think I should underdevelop one roll so I know how to handle the second. I'm even tempted to cut the rolls in half and test one portion.
And by the way I instinctively kept feeling that I'm overexposing ... the readings did seem poor but I followed the meter after I checked it's battery level.
Ashok
Reflected meters are affected by subject brightness, which is why they are such miserable contraptions if not used with skill and understanding. Your meter suggested less exposure than when in incident mode because it was telling you something different. A reflected meter tells you how to make anything within its field of view appear half a stop below middle grey in a normal print, no matter how light or dark it is in reality. An incident meter tells you how to make a middle tonality in reality appear as a middle tonality in a normal print.
Reflected meters do the same thing as incident meters if you fill the reflected meter's field of view with a grey card, and then add 50% more light than the meter recommends (open up half a stop, or slow down 1/2 shutter speed).
As long as the incident meter (or grey card) is in roughly the same light as your subject when you metered, your exposures will be near to textbook perfect (barring technical failure/inaccuracy of any of the parts of your "image chain" that affect negative exposure, such as shutters, f stops, etc.).
You should point incident meters at the light you want to measure; at that for which you want to expose. So, if you point it at light that is different from the light that your subject is in, you will get an "incorrect" exposure for the subject.
Using a directly-read averaging reflected meter reading to judge whether or not your incident meter is giving you an ideal exposure is near futile, because there will nearly always be a mismatch between the two, and often a significant one.
At any rate, negative film can survive some overexposure quite well. I would develop more based on the contrast of the light in which you shot than on possible exposure mistakes in the direction of overexposure. If you shot in contrasty light and want a normal-looking negative, I'd underdevelop. If you shot in contrasty light and want a contrasty negative, I'd develop normally, or even push if you want extreme contrast. If you shot in average-contrast light, and want an average contrast negative, I'd develop normally. See what I mean? There are three steps in what determines the contrast on your print: 1. The contrast of the brightnesses within your composition (A.K.A. luminance range or subject brightness range), 2. How that compositional contrast is rendered on film by your combination of film emulsion, exposure, and development, and 3. How the contrast on the negative is rendered on photo paper by your combination of paper, enlarger, developer, and what have you.