My ideal with both flash and video imging, is to have one small kit capable of a wide variety of professional lighting effects.
The core of this, will be my four, 4’, deep silver umbrella soft boxes and here are the reasons why;
Versatility. They can be used as large soft boxes, open deep silver brollies, be double diffused or gridded. This gives me the most control to quality I have from one mod type. I was at first concerned my favourite look, the reversed 42” brolly with its smooth highlights would be lost as they do run hotter natively, but the reality is, nearly any look is possible between the modifiers options and some post. The second to last image below is potentiually softer than the 7’ white brolly.
Efficiency. These things guarantee me at lest one more stop of light than any reversed brolly, sometimes even more. This means more grunt for range, for endurance and for control. Even with constant lights, they are reasonably powerful.
Handling. The stem through the side design is great for centre of balance and reduced footprint. These things provide 4’ of double diffusion (bounced then diffused), without the big nose of a Bowens mount soft box (my little 26” on a light is actually deeper when mounted) and more control than a brolly, without the annoying stem sticking out or the “wind catcher” effect.
My 7’ brollies need to be used carefully and many of my lighter, smaller mods don’t feel as well put together by comparison. The end result is the stand needed is not ridiculaous and my C-stand can take 4 of them for a super wall of light!
The only issues are remembering to put the stem in the hole before mounting the light and the hole in the side is only about 8” long, sometimes making tilting an issue, but putting the whole thing on a tilt-able boom or even two on one and rotating the stem itself fixes that, but I also sometimes just push the stem in from the front.
Cost. $100au gets you two Godox ones, with grids, Neewer are often cheaper. That’s 8’ of diffused light with control. That means you can have depth, accumulate consistent parts (double diffusion) and even have a couple set up differently to the primaries, ready to go. I am personally looking forward to the 4 mod, 8’x 8’ monster light. They must be popular because they are regularly the pick for best value mods on ebay and Amazon and the accessories are rarely dearer than smaller mod ones.
I still have the 42” brollies, the 26” double diffused soft box, my 7’ monsters etc, so no issues there, but as my ground zero, my “dependables”, first in the bag, these will do.
A generous and soft light, even from a video lift pretty much straight out of the camera.