My Chimera Super Pro Plus XXS 12″x16″ softbox is the one piece of lighting gear that I couldn’t live without. With it I have beautiful soft window light that I can take with me anywhere. I use Nikon equipment so my flash of choice is the SB-800 but you could do the same with, say, a Canon 580EX, Vivitar 285HV or equivalent.

The beauty of the Chimera softbox is the range of light quality that I can achieve with it. I can use it with just the front diffuser (3 different strengths available), add an internal baffle for further diffusion or even add the diffusion dome to my SB-800 for ultra soft diffusion. For further control I can adjust the zoom factor on my flash unit and with a telephoto setting I can get the effect of a tight hot spot on the front diffuser with gradual fall off to the edges. The velcroed recessed front of the softbox makes it easy to attach a grid to provide a directional but still diffused light (see here for examples and dimensions). I quite easily constructed my own grid out of black card using the dimensions here but if I needed portability I would seriously consider purchasing a pre-made one. although I should warn you they are not that cheap, especially if you desire more than one for different angles. I use mine to put the light exactly where I want to and keeping the light off the background. In much the same way as a grid can be attached masks of varying shapes can be fixed to the front to, for example, convert the softbox to a thin striplight. Once again, these masks can be purchased or quite easily fabricated from black card.

Most of my photography is still life and, moreover, of quite small objects close up so the size of softbox I use is perfect for me but your needs may differ and larger (much larger!) sizes are available but 2 gotchas to be aware of are that the larger the softbox the more power you will need to maintain the aperture you may need to use for depth of field and they also get very expensive , very quickly as the size increases. The power problem is not as great as you might think because, more often than not you will be using your softbox very close to your subject. The softness of the light is a factor of the relative size of your light source (the front panel of your softbox becomes effectively your light source) to your subject and the closer you place that light source to the subject the more the light will wrap around it - to the extent that often a reflector or fill is not needed, or at most use a white reflector opposite the light and not too close or you may find the lighting too flat and loses all modeling. You won’t miss having modeling lights as positioning is very straightforward. Where do you position your softbox? Anywhere a window might be if you were using available interior light. That is why I call my softbox my portable window lighting - only with far more control!

On the occasions I’m shooting very small objects or extreme close ups I will substitute a very small Lastolite or Westcott Micro Apollo softbox - not quite as versatile as its Chimera big brother but more maneouverable when moved in really close to the subject.

If you need more information and some useful links for lighting tutorials please see my previous posts, Learn How To Light Anything and How To Be A Lighting Detective.

Finally here is an example of the soft, wrap around lighting possible with one softbox just out of frame to the front and right of the subject and with no reflector.

Flower On Black