Flashgun & Stofen or Softbox

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I covered a dance/presentation for a club last year, and been asked again this year. Last years set up - i used a flashgun and stofen bounced of the ceiling, which worked fine, pics turned out fine.
Just wondered really, been looking at a softbox, would this be a better idea to use? i only have one flashgun just now.
thanks:D
 
Softbox might be a pain to carry around in a club environment. Might be worth a try and I guess you won't know until you try it, but take the stofen with you just in case. The softbox might work if it's left stationary and presentations are done on a stage. But if you're going to want to move around taking shots in different locations then it'll be a problem. But I guess you could slap the flash gun back onto the camera and use the stofen.
 
If you've got an assistant then you could have a softbox on a handle rather than a stand, but it depends on the space available as to whether that is feasible. Another option maybe one of the Fong-type diffusers, they seem to be popular with the wedding-shooter brigade, who are working in a similar type of environment.
 
no assistant, but presentation would be in one place anyway. just handing over of trophys etc. still thinking the softbox may be a better idea... do they cause "shadows" as they arent bounced? not really got a clue about them tbh!:lol:
 
Any other advice??:D all help needed... thanks
 
A Chimera 16x12-inch mini softbox with bracket for Sunpak or Metz handlemount flash was the way to do it, giving you the option of using an assistant with a lightstand on a dolly so you can use a long lens with the light source close to the subject, but angled from the side and above. The Chimera stuff is rare and expensive on fleabay these days, but there are now the cheaper alternatives.

Here's the current Chimera setup, for use with a normal on-camera flash, positioned above the camera on a bracket: http://www.chimeralighting.com/dspProduct.asp?productid=11

The guru on these matters was Gene Windell, whose comments you can still find on Google Groups e.g.: http://groups.google.co.uk/group/re...read/thread/4f67f27335ef0c10/2e34eb51115c20c5
 
If there is a ceiling to bounce off, you will get better results with a Stofen IMHO. Much wider, more even coverage, with a nice dash of fill :thumbs:

Softbox will be much harder to use, only really suitable for one or two people at a time, and the light will fall off rapidly giving a dark background. You could probably lift that with a slow sync shutter speed, but you'd prolly do that with the Stofen too, and you wouldn't need so much with that generally speaking.

I don't see the benefit of a softbox at all, but I can see some problems with it.
 
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