One thing about Dave's excellent advice on exposure..."expose for the
shadows". This works great for print film; but I've always used the
opposite for slide film, expose for the highlights and let the shadows
fall where they may. The worst thing you can do to slide film is
overexpose it--I have thrown away thousands of slides over the years
because of overexposure. Also a good incident meter can give excellent
results too. An incident meter measures the actual light falling on a
subject rather than what's reflected off the subject. Hence, the subjects
color and reflectivity don't have to be taken into consideration nearly as
much as when using a spot meter. And sometimes it's tough to get close
enough to a subject (red bird) to fill the whole metering area with the
subject.

wjansen