Digital BW, The Print

Help!!! I have a Nikon coolpix 5700 and a coolpix 995. I have been 
playing with photography for the past 30 years off and on. One of 
the first things I learned with film was to find the true film speed 
for the equipment I was using. Now that I have digital, how do I do 
this same essential task? Let me throw something else into the pot. 
I use an old Sekonic incident light meter, which with the setting of 
ISO 100 seems to give me different results when used in bright 
sunlight and indoors. Let me elaborate, if the subject is fully 
sunlit and the light is coming from behind me; I get the expected 
reading of F/8 @ 1/500 of a second. If I set the camera manually to 
that setting, the scene seems to be underexposed. I have run some 
tests indoors and have gotten satisfactory results using the 
indicated Sekonic readings. It's only outdoors when it appears 
underexposed. Sidelit subjects seem to be close to properly exposed. 
I have tried exposure compensation in the camera to relate to 
setting ISOs of 50, 64, 80, 100. I am holding the light meter on the 
lens axis of the camera in relation to the subject being metered. 

The meter in the camera is extremely accurate for most of the time, 
but I would like to have the handheld meter to check it against. 
that is why getting the meter and me cooperating is so important. 
This quest will probably turn out to be "operator error." This is 
why this is posted, for folks more astute than I am to see the error 
of my ways and help me out of this dilemna.

Thansk for any and all help given

jeades1@...