I am an amateur skateboard photographer and I fairly recently got into the field of off camera flash. Im shooting with one Canon 430EXII Speedlite and It's being triggered with a Cactus V4 Trigger and Receiver set. The slave flash (430EXII) can not use ETTL information, and I've been reading up about guide numbers and all sorts of stuff in relation to what flash settings I could use. I've heard about different flash settings in relation to how far the subject is from the flash and even mathematical equations telling me how to deal with it, but to be honest I have no idea what I'm doing.
Could anyone clear up for me how to deal with these guide numbers etc. and what settings i should use in relation to flash distance and so on?
You are correct - you won't have TTL with the Cactus triggers. You have to set the power output manually. Don't forget the aperture will control your flash exposure on the subject, the shutter speed will control the amount of ambient you let into the scene.
How much power you need depends on how close the subject is, what aperture you'll be using and what the ambient light conditions are (and how much you want to control the ambient). To overpower the ambient, with a speedlight, you'll want to be shooting when light levels have dropped a bit - no chance with a single speedlight at midday.
Ok - knowing nothing about your shoot (how close you can get to the skaters) I'd suggest the following;
Shoot in manual, of course. Meter for the ambient and drop the exposure by a couple of stops (using shutter speed). You can't go above your max sync speed don't forget, so your shutter speed will be limited to that (1/250 in my case, dunno about yours - check your manual). If you need to, stop the aperture down a bit (though this will mean that you need more flash power to light the subject). Try to aim for f8 if you can (which is why I suggested shooting at lower light levels).
Do a test exposure at 1/4 power. If the subject is overexposed, drop the flash power, move it back or stop down the aperture further. If its underexposed, increase the flash power, move it closer (if you can), or open the aperture.
Try to make adjustments one stop at a time and reshoot to check results.
The Strobist Group on Flickr is also a mine of info - a quick search for 'skateboard' in the Group's discussion threads gives the following;
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