Is a Soft Box Really Necessary?

[Felipe Henao]

Soft boxes with halogen bulbs are an oven, fine with neon, but Neon has very low output.
Led is ok for low ouput, and low control situations but right for portability issues.
Powerful Leds could be an option for people that rather go with the latest fashion than with best results.
Frames are a great system, I've been using them since Dean Collins began with this system last century
I'll highly recommend to get Dean Collin's video series regarding light panels,
Actually Calumet and Photoflex are manufacturing the system for very reasonable prices.
Light is life, Live

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Horses for courses. I've lit plenty of indoor scenes and interviews with softboxes & they worked just fine. Your statement about florescents and LED's holds true in cramped quarters but the quality of light coming from all these sources is different & that must be taken into account.

I'm a huge fan of LED's due to their size, weight, low heat output & ability to be run off batteries but almost always prefer the quality of light that either softboxes or florescents produce.

That must be it, interviews being more stationary situations must be better for a softbox, I almost never light interviews. Also the need to better control and cut the light in narrative scenarios makes the softbox also a no-no most of the time for me.