Questions

I'm just getting started in strobe lighting...and I have a questions...I have a 430 ex and am possible looking to having it be remotely triggered

How do I meter for a certain scenario taking into account the strobe's light that will be added to the scene, when they aren't actually firing?

Please point me to some nice tutorials where I can read up on this

If you are using Speedlites in ETTL (automated exposure control by the camera/flash combination), you do not need a meter. The camera and flash equipment will automatically calculate the exposure settings for the camera.

To do this, you will need either another Speedlite such as the 580EX that can act as a master with the 430EX as a slave or you will need a Canon ST-E2 transmitter that will allow the camera to "communicate" with the 430EX at a distance.

If you wish to use the 430EX and the camera in manual mode, it is rather tricky (and usually somewhat expensive) to trigger the flash remotely. Using optical slave devices is seldom suitable as with most of them you need to cycle the power on the 430EX for every shot. I have not read in the forum here that anybody has figured out the reason for this problem or come up with an inexpensive solution. There is a way to get PocketWizard radio slaves to work, but you are looking at about $600 in hardware for a single link.

When using "studio" flash systems, you can generally connect one flash unit to the camera (either with a cord or some sort of wireless slave). The other units can trigger off the flash burst from the first. For this sort of system, you need a meter than can read the output of electronic flash sources. The Sekonic L-358 can be wire-connected to one of the flash units. It can also be outfitted with a radio transmitter to blend in with a PocketWizard radio slave system. You can also set it to "capture" the output of the flash units, then get someone to "take a picture", triggering the flash systems to take a reading on the meter.