If I’m shooting a closeup, I’d meter off the face, e.g. by skin tones. If it’s a full body shot, I just go by the built in matrix metering, which has been great on D300 so far. I never meter for highlights, D70 used to do that and it was a major headache for me. I never strive to preserve highlights, in fact I blow then all the time, as long as they are not my main subject… I’d blow a shirt on somebody, I’d blow the sky, anything light in the background - I’d sacrifice it for properly exposed skin tones in a heart bit :)